Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

by George Bird Grinnell

Of course, if a bad stream or a very steep ravine had to be crossed, Jack dropped behind and followed the pack animals, but the packing was so well done that it was very seldom they had to give any attention to the loads.

As they rode along Hugh said to Jack: "If we had a big train or heavy loads, I would go 'round the point of the hog-back, which would make us travel five or six miles further but would be a good deal easier on the horses, but our animals are fat and strong, and lightly loaded, and we may as well make the cut-off and cross the ridge."

The ascent of the hog-back was steep at first, but then became more gradual. Several times during the climb they stopped to let the horses breathe. On the way up, several big buck antelope were seen, each one feeding alone, but as they were all at some little distance from the trail, Jack thought it better to let them alone, on the chance later of getting a shot which would require less time.

They had nearly reached the crest of the ridge when Hugh, waving his hand toward the west, remarked, "I thought so; the range is afire," and Jack could plainly see the smoke rising some ten or fifteen miles distant. A little further on they could see the whole range, and found that everywhere to the south it was on fire, and that the fire seemed to be moving northward. Columns and masses of thick white smoke rose from the mountains in many places, and were rolling steadily along from south to north.

The fire seemed to be chiefly on the lower slopes of the mountains. Above it could be seen the green timber, and above that again gray rocks bare of vegetation, whitened a little further up by occasional patches of snow, and still higher were great fields of snow, pure and shining when touched by the rays of the sun, but seeming gray and soiled where shadowed by clouds or by a column of ascending smoke.

"No use to think of hunting there, is there, Hugh?" asked Jack.

"Not any, son," replied Hugh. "We'll have to strike into the hills somewhere else. But look at that beaver meadow this side of the mountain."

Jack lowered his eyes to the valley, and was astonished at what he saw. There, spreading over miles and miles, north and south, was a great carpet of green, bordered on either side by the gray and yellow prairie, and intersected by a thousand tiny streams that glistened in the sunlight. It looked like a vast carpet of emerald velvet over which had been spread an irregular net of silver cords.

Beautiful it was, but the most astonishing thing about it all was its great size. It seemed to stretch north and south for ten or fifteen miles, and east and west for half as many. The view presented astonishing contrasts in the aspect of the mountains, snow-capped, timber-clad, and fire-swept; and not less in the lower land, with its opposites of arid sage brush prairie, and of watered, verdant meadow.