A Day with a Tramp, and Other Days

by Walter A. Wyckoff

Even after we got under way again and were making progress southward in the direction of the “rimrock” of the Mogollon Mountains, persistent ill-luck followed us in the shape of almost nightly falls of snow and rain, which added nothing to the comfort of sleeping on the ground or walking across an almost trackless waste. But if we were disappointed here, Price’s promise of Indian summer was abundantly fulfilled when once we had waded through the snow in the great primeval forests that cover the northern slopes of the Mogollons, and made the abrupt descent of the “rimrock.” It was like the contrast of Florida with our Northern winter. The live-oak and budding cottonwood and the warm sun and sprouting grass gave us royal welcome from the cold and snow beyond; and, at the end of the first day’s journey in this region, we came out upon a ranch. It was thirty miles to the nearest neighbor, and the ranchman and his wife were glad to see anyone, even casual “burro-punchers,” like Price and me. There chanced to be a considerable company at the ranch that night. An outfit of three men who were hunting mountain lion through the range for the sake of the bounty on their scalps had come there to camp, bringing with them the carcass of a bear. And the postman, whose beat took him from the Santa Fé line southward through some Mormon settlements and on to scattered ranches north of the Tonto Basin, was also quartered there. So that we sat down more than a dozen strong to dine on bear steak and potatoes and bread and coffee; and when dinner was over, Price and I again had the good fortune to find that our tobacco suited well the taste of the company. We were gathered now in the living-room of the cabin. Some of the men were seated on the floor and others in rough, hand-made chairs about a wood fire in a large, open fireplace. The talk ranged at random over phases of hard living known to such men as these. It was varied and rich and sometimes racy. In it Price shone as a bright, particular star. None had travelled the Southwest so thoroughly as he, or experienced so much of its characteristic life. Then his native readiness at narrative stood him in good stead, and, penniless prospector that he was, he held unchallenged the centre of the stage.

The door of the dining-room stood open, and, when I had finished my pipe, I joined the ranchman’s wife, who sat beside the table in a rocking-chair, holding in her arms her oldest child, a boy of five or six. She seemed glad to have someone to talk to. The conversation at table had swept from end to end in a manner diverting to her, but in which she as little dreamed of joining as a bird would venture with untried wings into a high wind. She was too delicately reared to be at home in the thickening tobacco-smoke of the living-room and so she was alone with the child, the hired woman being in the kitchen. I praised the country side which she and her husband had chosen as their home, and told her how well it contrasted with a region only a few miles to the north; but, if I found a way to her heart at all, it was in genuine admiration of the boy, whose light hair rested in moist curls about his glowing face, as he lay sleeping in his mother’s arms. She was not a discontented woman—far from it; she was young, and her eyes shone with health and with vital interest in the things about her. But it was rarely that she saw anyone from the world outside, and I was a stranger, and when I owned to having been in the Northwest, she told me eagerly that her own people and her husband’s lived “back east in Minnesota,” where they both were born and bred.

How can I suggest the pathos of it? She was not complaining and yet, as she went on telling me of an earlier time, it was almost as a captive might have spoken of the wide range of living when he was free. Life in constant contact with her friends and the breadth of their many interests was in such striking contrast to existence on a ranch, with the nearest neighbor thirty miles in the offing, and with never a look from year to year over the rugged hills that formed the horizon.

One could see at a glance the opposite effects of the change upon the two natures. Her husband, native-born and country-bred, like herself, and schooled as a man must be whose bringing up is in a community which draws its blood and traditions pure from New England, yet had become more a frontiersman every year, in whom the memories of earlier things faded fast before the dominant realities of his new surroundings. She, on the contrary, cherished these memories of her own—her home and friends and church associations and Chautauqua circle (she told me particularly of that) until they were enshrined within her, and one could but see that, however loneliness might oppress her, she had an escape which must have furnished at times an enjoyment keener, perhaps, than any which real experience would have brought.

I have forgotten its name, but I think that it was known as “Young’s Valley,” a region some distance south of the “rimrock” and north of the hills which hem in the Tonto Basin. There were several ranches there, and a well-defined trail led on, by way of San Reno Pass, to Phœnix. When we entered the valley Price was all for veering off to the southwest and reaching Phœnix by the Natural Bridge, which he wished me to see. We left the trail near the first cabin which we passed in the valley, a deserted cabin for the time, and struck across the grass-grown hills in search of another way. Soon we were in a maze of trails; they were leading in every direction, but they were cattle-paths, and we came upon herds feeding over the winter-brown hills. It was a gently rolling country at the first, where Price had not the smallest difficulty in steering a course; for, although he had never been there before, yet the way had been described to him and he had no fear of losing it. Our only danger lay, apparently, in exhausting our provisions before reaching an inhabited region beyond. But we thought little of that, and entered light-heartedly enough upon an exploration that was new and attractive to us both.

Trouble began with the weakening of our burros. We had very little grain when we left the Tonto trail, and we counted upon fodder enough from a grazing country. But the grass grew thinner as we went, and the leanness of the cattle attested the leanness of the land, until we began to fear that our beasts would not have strength enough to pull through. Moreover, the country became increasingly rough, so that the effort of travel was the greater. Soon there came a day when our animals were weak and tottering under their loads, and we ourselves had to begin the march on a breakfast of tea and a few boiled beans, which exhausted our store. Still Price was confident of getting through, and, if the burros could hold out, there was prospect of plenty by night.

In the middle of the morning we found lying beside the trail a cow that was plainly dying. For an hour we worked over her, trying to discover evidences of a wound or of a broken leg, and trying, too, to ease her pain. I left her alive regretfully, but Price advised against shooting her.

Matters grew serious that afternoon. The trail became hopelessly lost, so that not even Price, with his developed instinct, could find it again. We were in the heart of the hills now, with cañons opening in strange confusion about us. One after another we explored them, only to find each a “box-cañon” at the end. Price was sure that our desired country lay just beyond, and it was maddening, late in the day, to acknowledge that he could find no way out but the one by which we entered. It was a sorry retreat; hungry and worn we went supperless into camp. By rare good luck, however, we hit upon camping-ground where there was more grass than we had seen for some time, and in the morning our burros and the pony were comparatively revived, fit again for a hard journey. And we gave it them.

Price and I had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, and very little then. Meanwhile we had been working hard in keen mountain air, and I was so hungry by the time that we got back to the cow, now dead beside the trail, that I proposed our eating some of her. Price quickly put an end to the plan, however, not on hygienic grounds, but by explaining that the cattlemen, if they found her mutilated, would conclude that she had been killed, and would make matters lively for us in consequence, hanging being the not uncommon penalty for this offence.

One does not keep close count of days in wandering over a frontier, and it was only an aggravation of our plight to remember that it was not Sunday merely but Christmas-day as well. But if Christmas heightened the sense of hardship, it furnished an admirable setting to its end. By trusting his instinct for a short cut, Price brought us out in the middle of the afternoon upon open hills, from which we not only saw a section of Young’s Valley, but, rising clear from the middle of it, a column of blue smoke from the chimney of a ranchman’s cabin. We wasted no time in covering the intervening miles and then we lifted, light-heartedly, the latch of the road-gate and, with the easy assurance of the frontier, drove our animals into the yard beside the corral. For some reason we had not been seen from the cabin, so Price walked on to the door, while I mounted guard over the burros. From a seat in the sun on an old hen-coop I could watch them as they nibbled the short grass, while from the cabin came peals of laughter, denoting that Price had fallen among friends who were keeping Christmas festival.