As the day waned the tints of the great mountains before us changed curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into measureless space—a sight indescribably strange and solemn.
The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes. We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right. We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve, and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet above the vale a curious semicircle of stones—probably an Indian outlook made by the Nez Percés in their retreat. Sitting with my back against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense of loneliness—never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills, by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred, no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless snow-fields, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east, and were lost in the walls of its cañon like a scimitar half sheathed. On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge ruins of a great town.
Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion, but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears, while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.
After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies, which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray bear—improperly called a grizzly—feeding a mile away in a long wide cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good place in which to face wounded bears. Away went the doctor.
"Let them alone, doctor," said Houston. "Hold up! That valley's full of bears." For he had seen a third.
The doctor paused a moment, and then there was a rush down the slope. A second shot finished one bear, and then began a running fight of a mile, in which wind was of more value than courage. Finally, Bruin No. 2 stopped. Leaving C. to end his days, the doctor and Houston pursued No. 3. As the bear grew weak and they approached him, the doctor's excitement and Houston's quite reasonable prudence rose together.
"Don't go down that cooly, doctor."
Then a shot or two, a growl, and the doctor gasping, "Do you think I left my practice to let that bear die in his bed?"
"Well, the place is full of bears," said George; and so on they went, now a shot and now a growl, and then a hasty retreat of Bruin, until, utterly blown and in full sight of his prey, the unhappy doctor murmured in an exhausted voice, "Give me one cool shot, George."
"Darn it!" replied George, "who's been warming your shots?"