Jack, the Young Ranchman: A Boy's Adventures in the Rockies

by George Bird Grinnell

This morning when they mounted and rode away, young Powell was loud in his praise of Jack's horse. He said, "I'll bet he's got the legs of any of these three horses. Mine is pretty fast and keeps pretty close to the dogs in the chase, but yours will run away from him as if he was standing still."

"That's right," said Hugh, "he's an awful good horse, and what's more, he's just as kind as he's good. You can get off him to hunt, and leave him, and you'll feel sure when you come back he'll be feeding in the same place. If you fire a shot, he puts up his head and looks at you with his ears pricked up, to see whether you've killed or not. Then, after you have butchered, if you lead him up to an animal to put the meat on him, he'll snort and curve his neck and look like he was terrible scared; but when you commence to lift the meat to put it on his back, he'll kind of crouch down and lean towards you, to make it easier for you to get it on. You can shoot off him and he'll never move. Sometimes I've thought that when I raised the gun to my shoulder to shoot he stopped breathing for a minute. I know he always kind o' spreads his legs to hold himself steady. You've got a good horse now, son, and I'd advise you to hang on to him as long as you're here at the ranch."

The ride down the valley was a pleasant one. The blue iris stood thick in the damp places. The brilliant red and yellow flowers of the cactus dotted the hillsides. White poppy blossoms swung in the wind, and, if one had been on foot the tiny blooms of the yellow violets, which send their roots so far down into the hard dry soil of the prairie, could have been seen thickly scattered on the slopes. It was a time, too, of singing birds. The clear, sweet whistle of the meadow-lark came from the hills near-by, and was answered from other farther hills in a faint refrain, which sounded like an echo. The little finches of the prairie rose from the ground high in air, and then descended slowly on motionless wings, singing as if their throats would burst. From far on high fell the tinkling notes of the unseen prairie skylark floating above them. Little ground squirrels and prairie dogs were busy everywhere, but as the horsemen and troop of dogs drew near, they scattered to their holes, and, after a few angry barks and squeaks, disappeared from sight. Now and then as they passed over some swell of the prairie they startled an antelope or two or three, which ran up on the neighbouring hills and stood there stamping and snorting. The dogs would look at them eagerly yet doubtfully, and would perhaps trot a little way toward them, but young Powell always whistled them back. The prairie and the air above it were full of pleasant sights and sounds.

Young Powell said to Jack, "The dogs had some hard runs yesterday, and I don't want them to be chasing antelope to-day, and so far from home. I don't run antelope often, anyhow, though I've got some with these dogs, but I use them mainly for wolves and coyotes; and it's a bad thing to have a lot of dogs think that they can run anything that gets up before them on the prairie. If I was going to run antelope, I'd have a special bunch of dogs for running them, and for nothing else."

"Then they've caught antelopes, have they?" asked Jack. "It hardly seems to me as if anything could catch an antelope, when it's really running as hard as it can."

"Oh, I don't know," said Powell, "there's lots of difference in antelopes. Some of them can run twice as fast as others. I almost roped an old doe once in a fair chase, and I wasn't riding anything but a slow cow pony at that. I never felt quite sure though whether I could have caught her or not, or whether she was just fooling me. I ran her and she took down a valley, and I caught up with her, and got so close that I was just getting my rope ready to throw, when she ran across a little green place where the grass stood pretty high. I would not have tried to cross it if I hadn't been after her, for it looked kind of wet, but I couldn't stop, and I put the spurs into the old horse, and he jumped right into the middle of it and stayed there, and I kept going and hit the hard ground on the other side. When I got up and caught the horse, the antelope was out of sight. Still, I know mighty well that there's a big difference in antelope. You take an old buck, and even if you get a good start on him, the dogs have a hard time to get up to him. You take an old doe, or a yearling buck, and it's almost always caught a heap easier. You see those two little blue dogs, the smooth ones, the two that are ahead? They're the fastest dogs I've got. I always depend on them to stop a coyote or a wolf. If they can catch him and throw him it's a mighty short time till the other dogs get up, and then they all pitch in and chew him. These two yellow, rough-haired dogs here, the biggest ones, they're the fighters. They bring up the tail of the chase, but when they get to the wolf they don't stop, they pitch right in. If it's a coyote, one of them generally gets him across the chest and the other in the flank, and then the rest of the dogs take hold wherever they can, and they all pull in different directions. It don't take no time at all to kill a coyote, but of course a big wolf is different. I've had three dogs killed by wolves, and each one only had one bite. They're terrible strong, powerful animals.

"I want to show you twelve pups that I've got at the ranch. They're little fellows yet, but I expect to get some awful good dogs out of them. I tell you a dog don't last any time at all at this sort of work. Some of 'em get cut up by the wolves, and some break their legs or sprain their shoulders, running, and some get hurt by the horses. It's a pretty rough life on a dog; but while they last they've an awful good time." Chatting thus, they covered mile after mile of prairie. Jack's horse stepped along lightly and easily. From time to time Hugh lit his pipe and smoked. Powell watched his dogs. The sun was warm, the air clear and pleasant, and Jack thought that he had never enjoyed a morning more.

Suddenly, just in front of the two blue hounds that were trotting before them, a jack-rabbit bounced up and scurried away at top speed. In an instant all the dogs were running for it, and Jack and young Powell were close at their heels. It was a short run. The leading blue dog pressed the rabbit hard; he dodged in front of the second dog, and in a moment had to dodge again, which threw him into the jaws of the first and he had run his last race. It was short but exciting; doubly so to Jack who had never seen anything of the sort. Powell jumped down among the hounds and cuffed and scolded them, while he took from them the fragments of the rabbit, and then mounted, and they all went on. A little later the dogs all broke away again after a badger which showed himself on the side hill; but he dodged into his hole before they reached him, and the dogs came back, looking foolish. Powell now took from a pocket in his saddle a whip, with a handle about a foot and a half long, and a lash of eight or ten feet, and whenever a dog pressed forward ahead of the horses, he struck at it, and after a little while the whole pack followed obediently at his horse's heels.