The Trail of The Badger: A Story of the Colorado Border Thirty Years Ago. Hamp Sidford Frederick

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      The bear – as we discovered afterward – had found our sheep, and was agreeably engaged in tearing it to pieces, when he caught a whiff of me. He was an old bear, and had very likely been chased and shot at more than once in the past few years – since the white men had begun to invade his domain – and having conceived a strong antipathy for those interfering bipeds which walked on their hind legs and carried "thunder-sticks" in their fore paws, he decided instantly that, before finishing his dinner, he would just dash out and finish me.

      And very near he came to doing it. It was only Dick's quick sight and his equally quick shout that saved me.

      My companion's warning cry to jump could have but one meaning: there was nowhere to jump except out upon the snow-bank; and recovering from my first momentary panic, I let go my rifle and sprang out from the rocks.

      My hope was that I should be able to keep my footing long enough to scramble across to the rocks on the other side; but in this I was disappointed. The snow-bed lay at an angle as steep as a church roof, and while its surface was slightly softened by the sun, just beneath it was as hard and as slippery as glass. Consequently, the moment my feet struck it they slipped from under me, down I went on my face, and in spite of all my frantic clawing and scratching I began to slide briskly and steadily down-hill.

      The bear – most fortunately for me – seemed to be less cunning than most of his fellows. Had he paused for a moment to reason it out, he would have seen that by waiting five seconds he might leap upon my back as I went by. Luckily, however, he did not reason it out, but the instant he saw me jump he jumped too, and he, too, began sliding down the icy slope ahead of me; for being, as I said, an old bear, his blunted claws could get no hold.

      It was an odd situation, and "to a man up a tree," as the saying is, it might have been entertaining. Here was the pursuer retreating backward from the pursued, while the pursued, albeit with extreme reluctance, was pursuing the pursuer – also backward.

      It was like a nightmare – and a real, live, untamed broncho of a nightmare at that – but luckily it did not last long. Finding that no efforts of mine would arrest my downward progress, and knowing that the bear, reaching the bottom first, need only stand there with his mouth wide open and wait for me to fall into it, I whirled myself over and over sideways, until presently my hand struck the rocks, my finger-tips caught upon a little projection, and there I hung on for dear life, not daring to move a muscle for fear my hold should slip.

      But from this uncomfortable predicament I was promptly relieved. I had not hung there five seconds ere the sharp report of a rifle rang out, and then another, and next came Dick's voice hailing me:

      "All right, Frank! I've got him! Hold on: I'm coming up!"

      Half a minute later, as I lay there face downward on the ice, I heard footsteps just above me, a firm hand grasped my wrist, and a cheerful voice said:

      "Come on up, old chap. I can steady you."

      "But the bear, Dick! The bear!" I cried, as I rose to my knees.

      "Dead as a door-nail," he replied, calmly. "Look."

      I glanced over my shoulder down the slope. There, on his back among the rocks, lay the cinnamon, his great arms spread out and his head hanging over, motionless. As the snarling beast had slid past him, not ten feet away, Dick, with his Winchester repeater, had shot him once through the heart and once in the base of the skull, so that the bear was stone dead ere he fell from the little two-foot ice-cliff at the bottom of the slope.

      As for myself, I had had such a scare and was so completely exhausted by my vehement struggles during the past couple of minutes, that for a quarter of an hour I lay on the rocks panting and gasping ere I could get my lungs and my muscles back into working order again.

      As soon as I could do so, however, I sat up, and holding out my hand to my companion, I said:

      "Thanks, old chap. I'm mighty glad you were on hand, or, I'm afraid, it would have been all up with me."

      "It was a pretty close shave," replied Dick; "rather too close for comfort. He meant mischief, sure enough. Well, he's out of mischief now, all right. Let's go down and look at him."

      "I suppose," said I, "it was the bear that the sheep were looking down at when they stood up there on the ledge all in a row."

      "Yes, that was it. If I'd known it was a bear they were staring at I'd have left them alone. A mountain-lion I'm not afraid of: he'll run ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But a cinnamon bear is quite another thing: the less you have to do with them, the better."

      "Well, as far as I'm concerned," said I, "the less I have to do with them, the better it will suit me. If this fellow is a sample of his tribe I'm very willing to forego their further acquaintance: my first interview came too unpleasantly near to being my last. Come on; let's go down."

      CHAPTER III

      The Mescalero Valley

      It had been our intention to take off the bear's hide and carry it home with us, but we found that he was such a shabby old specimen that the skin was not worth the carriage, so, after cutting out his claws as trophies, we went on to inspect our sheep. Here again we found that "the game was not worth the candle," as the saying is, for the bear had torn the carcass so badly as to render it useless, while the horns, which at a distance and seen against the sky-line, had looked so imposing, proved to be too much chipped and broken to be any good.

      My rifle we found lying beside the bear, it also having slid down the ice-slope when I dropped it.

      "Well, Frank," remarked my companion, "our hunt so far doesn't seem to have had much result – unless you count the experience as something."

      "Which I most decidedly do," I interjected.

      "You are right enough there," replied Dick; "there's no gainsaying that. Well, what I was going to say was that the day is early yet, and if you like there is still time for us to go off and have a try for a deer. I should like to take home something to show for our day's work."

      "Very well," said I. "Which way should we take? There are no deer up here among the rocks, I suppose."

      "Why, I propose that we go up over this ridge here and try the country to the southwest. I've never been down there myself, having always up to the present hunted to the north and east of camp; but I've often thought of trying it: it is a likely-looking country, quite different from that on the Mosby side of the divide: high mesa land cut up by deep cañons. What do you say?"

      "Anything you like," I answered. "It is all new to me, and one direction is as good as another."

      "Very well, then, let us get up over the ridge at once and make a start."

      Having discovered a place easier of ascent than those by which we had first tried to climb up, we soon found ourselves on top of the ridge, whence we could look out over the country we were intending to explore.

      It was plain at a glance that the two sides of the divide were very different. Behind us, to the north, rose Mescalero Mountain, bare, rugged and seamed with strips of snow. From this mountain, as from a center, there radiated in all directions great spurs, like fingers spread out, on one of which we were then standing. Looking southward, we could see that our spur continued for many miles in the form of a chain of round-topped mountains, well covered with timber, the elevation of which diminished pretty regularly the further they receded from the parent stem. On the left hand side of this chain – the eastern, or Mosby side – the country СКАЧАТЬ