Down the Yellowstone

by Lewis R. Freeman

SKI SNAPS

Lake Station, April 13.

Corporal Hope and I set out this morning from the Patrol Station, going after elk and buffalo pictures. Heading in the direction of Hayden Valley, we encountered two buffalo cows and their calves crossing a half-bare opening in the trees near the Mud Geyser. We had little difficulty in heading them as they tried to break away and driving them off on a course that offered me a favourable exposure. The calves were a month or more old, but tottered on their thin legs and seemed very weak, the consequence, no doubt, of continued inbreeding. The rapidly thinning herd is badly in need of an infusion of new blood.

We came upon the main herd farther down the valley, making some long-distance snap-shots on various individuals and sections of it as they went lunging off through the drifts at our approach. It was old "Tuskegee," reputed to be the largest specimen of the Bison Americanus in existence, whose picture I most cared for. The old fellow is estimated to weigh over 3000 pounds, is covered with a net-work of scars from his lifetime of fighting, and has only one eye and the remnant of a tail left. He has been seen to give battle to three pugnacious bull elk at once, and has killed numbers of them in single combat.

It was but a few summers ago that old "Tuskegee" left the herd, charged a coach full of tourists, goring one of the horses so badly that it had to be shot. The big vehicle was nearly overturned by the plunging horses, while its occupants—a party of New England school-teachers—were driven into frenzies of terror. Neither the bullets from a nickel-plated revolver in the hands of one of the schoolmarms, nor the long stinging whip of the driver, nor even his equally long and stinging oaths, affected "Tuskegee" in the least. He continued butting about among the frightened horses as though the wrecking of a six-in-hand coach was a regular part of his daily routine. At last, however, the sustained hysteria of the females seemed to get upon the old fellow's nerves. Wheeling about, he turned the stub of his tail to the swooning tourists and galloped, bellowing, over the hill.

An order was at once issued that "Tuskegee" should be shot on sight, and for a month a special detail from the Fort scoured the hills and valleys in search of the renegade. But all to no purpose. The old warrior, as though understanding that he was persona non grata with the authorities, retreated into the impenetrable fastnesses of the mountain spurs above Thorofare Plateau, and nothing was seen or heard of him for many months.

For two years there was an interregnum in buffalodom, during which the big herd gradually dropped to pieces and wandered about in leaderless fragments. Then, one day, a big bull elk was found, crushed and torn, trampled into the mud of Violet Springs, and the scouts told each other that the King had returned. A few days later a soldier of the game patrol, on a run through Hayden Valley, saw the reunited herd debouch from a canyon, with old "Tuskegee" puffing proudly in the lead. His tail was stubbier than ever, the grizzled red hair was more patchy on the rump and more matted on the neck, and a new set of scars was criss-crossed and etched into the old ones upon his flanks. The old fighting spirit still flamed, however, and the trooper owed his life to the fact that the snow was deep, the crust firm, the slope down and his ski well waxed. But a new superintendent was in charge, and his satisfaction at seeing the scattered herd once more united was so great that he stayed the order of execution. Since that time, strangely enough, "Tuskegee" has appeared to show his appreciation of this official clemency by behaving in a most exemplary manner.

I was endeavouring to get a picture of the main herd before it broke up, when Hope espied old "Stub Tail" in the rear of a bunch of young cows who were heading away for the hills. Shouting for me to join him, he gave chase. We gained on them easily in the heavy snow of the valley, and almost overtook them where they floundered, belly-deep, on their erratic course. Then they struck the wind-swept slopes of the lower hills, where the agile cows drew away from us rapidly and scampered out of sight. But not so old "Tuskegee." Whether it was rheumatism in his stiff old joints that made him stop, or simple weariness, or, as is most likely, the unconquerable pride that would not permit him to turn his back upon an enemy, I shall not attempt to say. In any case, he wheeled and faced us, head low, hoofs pawing the moss, and snorting in angry defiance.

As he stood with his rugged form towering against the white background of the snowy hillside, two jets of steam rushing from his nostrils, his jaws flecked with bloody foam, his one eye gleaming green as the starboard light of a steamer, and his bellows of rage so deep that they seemed to come from beneath the earth, old "Tuskegee" might have been the vindictive incarnation of the spirit of all the geysers and hell holes in the Yellowstone bent on an errand of wrath and destruction.

Right then and there I forgot what I came for, forgot the picture I had intended to take, forgot everything but that snorting colossus in front of me and the fact that the hillside sloped invitingly in the opposite direction. Wherefore I tried to swing around, and in swinging turned too short, crossed my ski, and fell in a heap with my face in the snow.