Birds of the Rockies

by Leander S. Keyser

Much labor and time and patience were expended in persuading our steeds to crawl up the hill, but I am delighted to say that no profane history was quoted, as we were a strictly moral crowd. At length we arrived in state at the village of Silver Plume. Canter into the town like a gang of border ruffians we did not; we entered deliberately, as became a dignified company of travellers. But here a new difficulty confronted us, stared us blankly in the face. Our little charges could not be convinced that there was any occasion for going farther than the town. They seemed to have conscientious scruples about the matter; so they stopped without any invitation from their riders, sidled off, turned in toward the residences, stores, groceries, shoe-shops, drugstores, barns, and even the saloons, the while the idlers on the streets and the small boys were gawking at us, smiling in a half-suppressed way, and making quaint remarks in which we could see no wisdom nor humor. We had not come into the town, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, merely to furnish the villagers amusement. Applying our canes and straps forcibly to the haunches and rumps of our burros only seemed to embarrass the poor creatures, for you can readily see how they would reason the matter out from their own premises: If they were to go no farther, as had been decided by themselves, why should their riders belabor them in that merciless way? For downright dialectics commend me to the Rocky Mountain burro.

Finally a providence in the shape of two small boys came to our rescue, and in a most interesting and effective way. Seeing the predicament we were in, and appreciating the gravity of the situation, those nimble-witted lads picked up a couple of clubs from the street, and, getting in the rear of our champing steeds, began to pound them over the haunches. For small boys they delivered sturdy blows. Now, if there is anything that will make a burro move dexterously out of his tracks, it is to get behind him with a club and beat a steady tattoo on his hams and legs. No sooner did the boys begin to apply their clubs in good earnest than our burros began to print tracks in quick succession on the dusty road, and we went gayly through the town, the lads making a merry din with their shouts and whacks, mingled with the patter of hoofs on the street. It was so dramatic that even the women came to their doors to witness the pageant. We tried not to laugh, and so did the delicately mannered spectators, but I suspect that a good deal of laughing was done on the sly, in spite of the canons of etiquette.

At length the obliging lads became a little too accommodating. They used their persuasives upon the donkeys so vigorously that they—the donkeys—started off on a lope, a sort of awkward, lop-sided gallop. Now, if there is anything that is beyond the ability of Master Jack, especially if he is old, it is to canter and at the same time preserve his equilibrium. It is evident that he is not built to make a rocking-chair of his back bone. So a little comedy was enacted, all involuntary on the part of the dramatis personæ. Suddenly Turpentine—that was the name of the little gray burro ridden by my boy companion—took a header, sending his youthful rider sprawling to the ground, where he did not remain a moment longer than good manners demanded. Fortunately he succeeded in disengaging his feet from the stirrups and directing his movements in such a way that the animal did not fall upon him. But poor Turpentine, what of him? He tumbled clean over his head upon his back, and I want to confess in all candor that one of the most instructive and interesting "animal pictures" I have ever seen, including those done by Landseer, Rosa Bonheur, and Ernest Thompson Seton, was that little iron-gray, long-eared donkey lying on his back on the street and clawing the air with his hoofs. And he clawed fast, too—fairly sawed the air. For once in his life Turpentine, the snail paced, was in a hurry; for once he moved with more celerity than grace. It threw us into spasms of laughter to see him exert himself so vigorously to reverse his position—to get his feet down and his back up. A cat could not have done it with more celerity. You never would have believed him capable of putting so much vim and vigor into his easy-going personality. After chopping the air with his hoofs for a second or two, he succeeded in righting himself, and was on his feet in less time than it takes to tell it. There he stood, as meek as Mary's lamb, trying to look as if he had never turned an undignified somersault in all his tranquil life.

We started on our journey again, and presently, to our intense relief, reached the border of the town, thanked the lads who had expedited our march along the street, and proceeded on our way up the valley. We soon settled down to taking our burros philosophically, and erelong they were going calmly on the even tenor of their way, and afterwards we had little trouble with them, and actually became quite attached to the gentle creatures before our joint pilgrimage drew to an end.

It is time to pass from quadrupeds to bipeds. While our feathered friends were not so abundant in the wilder regions as we might have wished, still we had almost constant avian companionship along the way. The warbling vireos were especially plentiful, and in full tune, making a silvery trail of song beside the dusty road. We had them at our elbow as far as Graymont, where we made a sharp detour from the open valley, and clambered along a steep mountain side, with a deep, wooded gorge below us. Here the vireos suddenly decided that they could escort us no farther, as they had no taste for crepuscular cañons and alpine heights. Not a vireo was seen above Graymont, which has an altitude of nearly ten thousand feet. We left them singing in the valley as we turned from it, and did not hear them again until we came back to Graymont.

Almost the same may be said of the broad-tailed humming-birds, whose insect-like buzzing we heard at frequent intervals along the route to a shoulder of the mountain a little above Graymont, when it suddenly ceased and was heard no more until we returned to the same spot a few days later. House-wrens, willow thrushes, Brewer's blackbirds, and long-crested jays were also last seen at Graymont, which seemed to be a kind of territorial limit for a number of species.

However, several species—as species, of course, not as individuals—convoyed us all the way from Georgetown to the timber-line and, in some instances, beyond. Let me call the roll of these faithful "steadies": Mountain hermit thrushes, gray-headed juncos, red-shafted flickers, pine siskins, western robins, Audubon's and Wilson's warblers, mountain bluebirds and white-crowned sparrows. Of course, it must be borne in mind that these birds were not seen everywhere along the upward journey, simply in their favorite habitats. The deep, pine-shadowed gorges were avoided by the warblers and white-crowned sparrows, whilst every open, sunlit, and bushy spot or bosky glen was enlivened by a contingent of these merry minnesingers. One little bird added to our list in the gorge above Graymont was the mountain chickadee, which was found thereafter up to the timber-line.

It was sometime in the afternoon when we reached Graymont, which we found to be no "mount" at all, as we had expected, but a hamlet, now mostly deserted, in a narrow valley in sight of several gray mountains looming in the distance. Straight up the valley were some snow-mantled peaks, but none of them was Gray's; they did not beckon to us from the right direction. From the upper part of the hamlet, looking to our left, we saw a frowning, snow-clad ridge towering like an angry giant in the air, and we cried simultaneously, "Gray's Peak!" The terrific aspect of that mountain sent a momentary shiver through our veins as we thought of scaling it without a guide. We were in error, as we afterwards found, for the mountain was Torrey's Peak, not Gray's, which is not visible from Graymont, being hidden by two intervening elevations, Mount Kelso and Torrey's Peak. There are several points about a mile above Graymont from which Gray's serene peak is visible, but of this we were not aware until on our return trip, when we had learned to recognize him by his calm and magisterial aspect.

As evening drew on, and the westering sun fell below the ridges, and the shadows deepened in the gorges, making them doubly weird, we began to feel very lonely, and, to add to our misgivings, we were uncertain of our way. The prospect of having to spend a cold night out of doors in a solitary place like this was not very refreshing, I am free to confess, much as one might desire to proclaim himself a brave man. Presently our eyes were gladdened by the sight of a miner's shack just across the hollow, perhaps the one for which we were anxiously looking. A man at Graymont had told us about a miner up this way, saying he was a "nice man" and would no doubt give us accommodation for the night. I crossed the narrow foot-bridge that spanned the booming torrent, and found the miner at home. Would he give two way-worn travellers a place to sleep beneath his roof? We had brought plenty of food and some blankets with us, and all we required was four walls around us and a roof over our heads. Yes, he replied, we were welcome to such accommodation as he had, and he could even give us a bed, though it "wasn't very stylish." Those were among the sweetest and most musical words that ever fell on my ear.

Having tethered our burros in a grassy cove on the mountain side, and cooked our supper in the gloaming among some rocks by the bank of the brawling stream, we turned into the cabin for the night, more than grateful for a shelter from the chill winds scurrying down from the snow-capped mountains. The shack nestled at the foot of Mount Kelso, which we had also mistaken for Gray's Peak. As we sat by the light of a tallow candle, beguiling the evening with conversation, the miner told us that the mountain jays, colloquially called "camp robbers," were common around his cabin, especially in winter; but familiar as they were, he had never been able to find a nest. The one thing about which they insist on the utmost privacy is their nesting places. My friend also told me that a couple of gray squirrels made the woods around his camp their home. The jays would frequently carry morsels of food up to the branches of the pines, and stow them in some crevice for future use, whereupon the squirrels, always on the lookout for their own interests, would scuttle up the tree and steal the hidden provender, eating it with many a chuckle of self-congratulation.