“Considerin’ what the snow an’ ice does to the rocks, that’s strickly possible,” conceded “Grizzly.” “But, if I ever seen a mountain ’at you’d say was nonassessible I reckon it’s the Bench.”
“But Old Baldy,” exclaimed Frank, “tell us about him.”
“I ain’t seen Baldy but once,” went on the talker, “but I’d heerd o’ him often from the Kootenai Injuns. They didn’t make no doubt about him bein’ the king o’ the Bighorns an’ I kind o’ agreed with ’em when I seen him. The biggest ram I ever killed stood 41 inches high an’ weighed 320 pounds. Ef Ol’ Baldy don’t weigh 500 pounds and stan’, horns to hoofs, near five feet, I’m mistook bad.”
“But why is he called Baldy?” Phil asked quickly.
“Because he is,” replied Hosmer, “is, ur wuz, fur like enough he’s dead now. Baldy is, ur wuz, the Black Ram all right; his horns when I seen him wuz black as new coal—and big! I’ll never swear ’at I could span ’em with my two arms. Sheep as a rule is sort o’ brown-black lookin’; one ur the other as depends. I reckon Baldy had been reg’lar black but bein’ mighty old accordin’ to the rings on his horns he wuz gray like mostly all over, makin’ him look sort o’ ghost like. That is exceptin’ his head where he wuz plum’ bald. From his horns to his muzzle he hadn’t a speck o’ hair an’ the skin o’ his face, though it wuz flabby and wrinkled, wuz kind o’ pinkish-cream like. That, him bein’ gray all over, wouldn’t ’a’ looked so unusual like ef it hadn’t ’a’ been fur two black marks on his face. I couldn’t never figger out whether it wuz hair still a growin’ there ur disfiggerments o’ the skin. But the ol’ ram, an’ I never made no doubt but it was him the Kootenais call Husha, has a mark ye’ll know if ye ever see him. From the crown o’ his horns to his muzzle they is a black stripe jist like a streak o’ paint an’ as reg’lar. Acrost from eye to eye is another stripe and them two makes a black cross; ’at’s the first thing I saw—a black cross on his ol’ pinkish, wrinkled face.”
“And?” exclaimed Frank eagerly as Hosmer fondled his pipe a moment.
“Well,” resumed the story-teller, “to git to facks, I wuz lion huntin’ one winter with Jack Jaffray, havin’ a camp up back o’ Mt. Osborne. We wuz workin’ on snowshoes an’ had been out o’ camp about twenty-four hours down near Baldy’s Bench, the weather bein’ fine an’ the snow hard. We had a notion about lions gittin’ out o’ the timber on to the sheep trails fur food and the Bench seemed a likely place. This wuz in April an’ they had been enough sun to start some o’ the snow up on the Bench over on the east side. They wuz great clean patches o’ rock whar the steps had been swept clean by slides.
“That meant the sheep trails might be clear in the sunniest part o’ the east side. It was purty hard walkin’ in the timber so we got clost as we could to the Bench an’ crawlin’ over the snow kivered rocks worked around to east’ard. It wasn’t long before we come acrost lion signs an’ fresh ones, too. Out o’ the timber them lions had come, fur they wuz two, jist ahead of us an’ on the same bus’ness. That looked good fur we had the wind o’ ’em—”
“You mean mountain lions?” asked Frank edging still nearer.