As we ascended the stream, cedar and piñon were succeeded by pine and quaking asp, and snow, first in patches, then covering the ground, appeared. Wherever the cañon was wide enough, some enterprising mountaineer had enclosed a few acres, and as the little garden thus formed received the alluvial deposit of the hillsides, grain and vegetables had been cultivated successfully and extensively.
At the summit, nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, we found snow so deep that we took possession of Shorthorns’ summer residence, a log-hut twelve feet square. As we had cached our grain at the lower ranch, we helped our mules to Shorthorns’ hay and settled down for a week’s good hunting. The hut had been plastered with adobe, but this was so conspicuous by its absence that innumerable holes rendered the building capable of defense by musketry, and promised unwelcome draughts at night.
We hunted all that afternoon, tramping about in snow several inches deep, but my bag contained only one squirrel, while a teamster reported the slaughter of one squirrel and “about” two jays—from which we gathered that he had killed one and missed another of those carrion birds. And we had now consumed eight days of our leave!
At night Shorthorns turned up rather unexpectedly, and as I saw no blankets on his saddle, I had “many a doubt, many a fear,” which were vividly recalled when he chose me for his bed-fellow. Tradition says that a cowboy can pull his hat over his eyes and sleep oblivious of the weather. As I woke several times that night on the floor and saw my host snugly tucked up in my bedding, I weaken on tradition and call for more valuable testimony.
My heart ceased beating for a whole second when next morning, charmed with our fare and my bed, Shorthorns offered to accompany us on the hunt and back to El Paso. The pleasure of hunting lost a little of its lustre, and we were one more step removed from Paradise.
One day at the summit Shorthorns promised to show me game. I thought it must be time, so saddled a little buckskin mule and rode out with him. It was as cold as Christmas, and had I been alone I should have chosen a later hour and a milder day. But with the honor of the entire army resting on my shoulders I did not complain of frosted toes and aching fingers. I rode in the rear that he might not notice my squirms of anguish, and when he ventured the opinion that it was “right peart,” I nonchalantly kicked the mule’s ribs and said nothing. What could I say, when my teeth played a reveille and tattoo and fire alarm all at once? Doubtless he suffered as much as I and had the same pride in concealing it.
The first sign was a homesteader’s, two logs across two others—all on snow a foot deep. A notice on a pine-tree adjacent stated that this was the foundation of a house and claim to 160 acres under the homestead law. Two witnesses vouched for this claim, though quite unnecessarily, as no sane man would live at that bleak place, and deer and elk, despite their reputed domesticity, are not given to jumping homesteads.
We saw several sign, and trailed all morning on foot or mule-back. At noon we struck it rich. I didn’t see the riches, but Shorthorns did, as he ordered a dismount to fight on foot. We tied the animals in a little aspen thicket, and my guide sent me in one direction, while he chose the deer trail, with a little advice about springing a cross fire on the buck. I wondered why I had been sent in an opposite direction from that taken by the deer, but when presently I heard Shorthorns shoot, I saw the reason. Abandoning my course, I rushed toward the location of the shots, plunging through snow to my boot-tops. I heard him shoot again, and pushed ahead to obtain a shot on my own account.
I found the tracks, and for a mile Shorthorns trailed the deer and I trailed Shorthorns.
Receiving no encouragement, and yielding to hunger and fatigue, I followed the trail back to the animals in order to get to my lunch. This consumed much time, as the woods were so full of an undergrowth of shin oak, called there “shinnery,” that it was very difficult to find a way, or to follow it when found.