Tales of lonely trails

by Zane Grey

The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my way back I found Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to come up over the rim, and for me to return. They asked for my story. Then I learned theirs. Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day. Copple had worked far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate any bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon Haught said: "Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other bear."

One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay down beside us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd and Nielsen plodding up. At length they reached us wet and dusty and thirsty. When Edd got his breath he said: "Right off we struck a hot trail. Bear with eleven-inch track. He'd come down to drink last night. Hounds worked up thet yeller oak thicket, an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of his bed. He run down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes an' hit up lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around under thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come sneakin' back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we climbed the east side high enough to see. An' we were workin' down when the pack bayed the bear round thet bare point. It was up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I climbed on a rock. There was an open rock-slide where we thought the bear would show. It was five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across an' got a stand higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin' out of the brush—a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet bear began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up like a ruffle on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three. Reckon one of us stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his last jump off the slide was a header into the brush. He crossed the canyon, an' climbed thet high east slope of Dude, goin' over the pass where father killed the big cinnamon three years ago. The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an hour or more to climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We heard the hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek. I kept callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't catch him. He sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's all.... Now who was smokin' shells up on the rim?"

When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can just bet we put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet old Jasper of a silvertip."

How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to camp! The day had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and sensorial perceptions. I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to death!" And Takahashi, who had many times heard my little boy Loren yell that, grinned all over his dusky face. "Aw, lots good things pretty soon!"

After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling camp-fire. The blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed white and opal, the smoke swooped down and curled away into the night shadows. Old Dan, as usual, tried to sit in the fire, and had to be rescued. Buck came to me where I sat with my back to a pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame to-night, having run all day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay scattered around in range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in such an environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of stories.

Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple immediately topped my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred Nielsen to talk about the Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted to the Yuma Indians. Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.

One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion. His employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One time, on the way to their home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his anger he heaved the anchor overboard. That of course halted the boat, and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored. She was not by any means a small or frail girl—rather the contrary—but she appeared diminutive beside her giant husband. One day he returned from a long absence on the sea. When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died. In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.

Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway. Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the ship came back. The captain called for volunteers. There were two young men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates, schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One of these young men said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the other quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill, and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room with the ship supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that contained his dead friend. When the ship returned the crew found the living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his life afterward was he seen to smile.

These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about Jones' Ranch. How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life! Again I heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the waves upon a lonely shingle shore. Who would not be a teller of tales?

Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his own—a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable narrative. But Copple seemed deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange simplicity of exaggeration. The boys thought Copple stretched the truth a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.