And this one cool shot ended the fray. Returning, they found the judge had driven his bear into a thicket, and, having probably taken out a ne exeat or an injunction, or some such effective legal remedy against him, awaited reinforcements. As George and the doctor arrived the bear moved out into the open, and was killed by a final shot.
Mr. Jump informs us that one gets an awful price out of the Chinese for bear-galls; and it is the judge's opinion that at this supreme moment the doctor would have taken a contract to supply all China with bile of Bruin. I suspect our friend George has since told at many a camp-fire how the doctor's spurs danced down the coolies, and how the judge corralled his bear.
We broke camp August 10th at four, after a night of severe cold—27° Fahrenheit—but perfectly dry and dewless. E. and I, as usual, pushed on ahead across Lodge Pole Creek, and so down the valley of Clarke's Fork. An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood, alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush. Losing Pilot and Index as the windings of the main valley hid them, and leaving them behind us, we began to see rocks of bright colors and more and more regular walls of silvery gray stone. At last the widening valley broadened, and from it diverged five valleys, like the fingers from a hand, each the bed of a stream. As we turned to the left and crossed the wildly-rolling hills, and forded Clarke's Fork to camp by Dead Indian Creek, the novelty and splendor of this almost unequalled view grew and grew. As I close my eyes it comes before me as at the call of an enchanter. From the main valley the outlook is down five grass-clad valleys dotted with trees and here and there flashing with the bright reflection from some hurrying stream. The mountains between rise from two to ten thousand feet, and are singular for the contrasts they present. The most distant to the right were black serrated battlements, looking as if their darkness were vacant spaces in the blue sky beyond. The next hill was a mass of gray limestone, and again, on the left, rose a tall peak of ochreous yellows, sombre reds and grays. The hill above our camp was composed of red and yellow rocks, fading below to gray débris, bounded beneath by a band of grasses, and below this another stratum of tinted rock; and so down to the plain. The side-view of this group showed it to be wildly distorted, the strata lying at every angle, coming out against the distant lava-peaks and the green slopes below them in a glory of tenderly-graded colors.
It seems as if it should be easy to describe a landscape so peculiar, and yet I feel that I fail utterly to convey any sense of the emotions excited by the splendid sweep of each valley, by the black fierceness of the lava-peaks thrown up in Nature's mood of fury, by the great "orchestra of colors" of the limestone hills, and by a burning red sunset, filling the spaces between the hills with hazy, ruddy gold, and, when all was cold and dark, of a sudden flooding each grim lava-battlement with the dim mysterious pink flush of the afterglow, such as one may see at rare times in the Alps or the Tyrol. In crossing the heads of these valleys, some day to be famous as one of the sights of the world, we forded Clarke's Fork, the major, Jack and I being ahead. We came out on the far side upon a bit of strand, above and around which rose almost perpendicularly the eroded banks of the stream, some fifteen feet high. While the guides broke down the bank to allow of our horses climbing it, I was struck with a wonderful bit of water. To my right this tall bank was perforated by numerous holes, out of which flowed an immense volume of water. It bounded forth between the matted roots and welled up below from the sand, and, higher up the bank, had, with its sweet moisture, bribed the ready mosses to build it numerous green basins, out of which also it poured in prodigal flood.
At this point, Dead Indian, we at first decided to await the looked-for scout, but on the next morning the major resolved to leave a note on a tripod for Mr. T., still out hunting, and to camp and wait on top of Cañon Mountain above us. So we left the noisy creek and the broken tepees of Joseph and the Nez Percés, and the buffalo and deer-bones and the rarer bones of men, and climbed some twenty-four hundred feet of the hill above us: then passed over a rolling plain, by ruddy gravel-hills and grasses gray- or pink-stemmed, to camp, on what Mr. Baronette called Cañon Mountain, among scattered groups of trees having a quaint resemblance to an old apple-orchard. Here we held counsel as to whether we should wait longer for the scout, push on rapidly to Custer, or complete our plans by turning southward to see the Black Cañon of the Big Horn River. Our doubt as to the steam-boats, which in the autumn are few and far between, and our failing provisions, decided us to push on to the fort. Having got in all our parties, with ample supplies of game, we started early next day to begin the descent from these delightful hills to the plains below. We rode twenty-eight miles, descending about thirty-seven hundred feet over boundless rolling, grass-clad foot-hills, behind us, to the left, the long mountain-line bounding the rugged cañon of Clarke's Fork, and to the right a march of lessening hills, and all before us one awful vast gray, sad and silent plain, and in dimmest distance again the gray summits about Pryor's Gap. The space before us was a vast park, thick with cactus and sage-brush, lit up here and there—but especially at the point where the cañon sets free the river on to the plain—by brilliant masses of tinted rocks or clays in level strata overlapping one another in bars of red, silver, pink, yellow and gray. With a certain sense of sadness we took a last look at these snowy summits rising out of their green crowns of pine and fir, and, bidding adieu to the wholesome hills, rode on to the grim alkali plain with the thermometer at 92°.
And now the days of bad water had come, each spring being the nastiest, and the stuff not consoling when once down, but making new and unquenchable thirst, and leaving a vile and constant taste of magnesia and chalk. And thus, over sombre prairies and across a wicked ford—where, of course, the captain and T. got their baggage wet—and past bones of men on which were piled stones, and the man's breeches thrown over these for a shroud or as a remembrance of the shrivelled thing below being human, we followed the Nez Percés' trail, to camp at four by the broad rattling waters of Clarke. Jack reported Indians near by—indeed saw them: guessed them to be Bannocks, as Crows would have come in to beg. Sentinels were thrown out on the bluffs near us and the stock watched with redoubled care.
I think every man who has camped much remembers, with a distinct vividness, the camp-fires. I recall happy hours by them in Maine and Canada and on the north shore of Lake Superior, and know, as every lover of the woods knows, how each wood has its character, its peculiar odors—even a language of its own. The burning pine has one speech, the gum tree another. One friend at least who was with me can recall our camps in Maine,
Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,
And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,
While half a century's silent growth
Went up in cheery flame and smoke.
The cottonwood burns with a rich, ruddy, abundant blaze and a faint pleasant aroma. Not an unpicturesque scene, our camp-fire, with the rough figures stretched out on the grass and the captain marching his solemn round with utterly unfatigable legs, Jack and George Houston good-humoredly chaffing, and now and again a howl responsive to the anguish of a burnt boot. He who has lived a life and never known a camp-fire is—Well, may he have that joy in the Happy Hunting-grounds!
The next day's ride was only interesting from the fact that we forded Clarke's Fork five times in pretty wild places, where, of course, Captain G. and the doctor again had their baggage soaked. The annoyance of this when, after ten hours in the saddle, you come to fill your tobacco-bag and find the precious treasure hopelessly wet, your writing-paper in your brushes, the lovely photographs, a desolated family presented on your departure, brilliant with yellow mud—I pause: there are inconceivable capacities for misery to be had out of a complete daily wetting of camp-traps. I don't think the captain ever quite got over this last day's calamity, and I doubt not he mourns over it to-day in England.