IV
ALL IN THE GAME
Day after day we progressed. There were bright days and days when we rode through a steady mist of rain. Always it was worth while. What matters a little rain when there is a yellow slicker to put on and no one to care how one looks? Once, riding down a mountain-side, water pouring over the rim of my old felt hat and pattering merrily on my slicker, I looked to one side to see a great grizzly raise himself from behind a tree-trunk, and, standing upright, watch impassively as my horse and I proceeded. I watched him as far as I could see him. We were mutually interested. The party had gone on ahead. For a long time afterward I heard the crackling of small twigs in the heavy woods beside the trail. But I never saw him again.
It is strange to remember how little animal life, after all, there seemed to be. There was plenty, of course. But our party was large. We had no chance to creep up silently on the wild life of the park. The vegetation was so luxuriant in the valleys. Beyond an occasional bear, once or twice the screaming of a mountain lion, and the gophers and marmots, we saw nothing. There were not many birds. We never saw a snake. It was too high.
One day, riding along a narrow trail on a mountain-side, the horse in front of mine stampeded, and for a moment it looked like serious trouble. For a stampeding horse on a two-foot trail is a dangerous thing. It developed that there was a wasp's nest there, and the horse had been stung. We all got by finally by lashing our horses and running past at a canter.
Another time, working slowly up a mountain-side, I told the chief ranger of the park of having seen many Western horses at the front in France.