Part 15

The Doctor's thermometer marked 20 degrees Fahrenheit when Fox called us, and the morning bucket which he dashed over us was flavored with more of the spirit of duty than usual. But otherwise the weather had been made for us. Yesterday's storm had beaten down the smoke from Washington forest fires, which had clouded everything for the past month, and the Sweet Grass Hills twinkled across one hundred miles of prairie as if at our feet; and yet there was hardly a breath of wind. Under the lee of the wall itself absolute stillness brooded over ledges which even a moderate breeze could have made dangerous. We did not make an early start. The thing could be done quickly if it could be done at all, for there was only 1,500 feet of cliff.

Our men did not give the attempt to reach the summit from this, the eastern side, even the scant compliment of a doubt; in their minds its failure was certain, but they were willing to see how far we could get up. The Doctor, too, had at first suggested, and with perfect correctness, that to try a difficult side of a mountain before reconnoitering the other was bad mountaineering, to say the least. But, on the other hand, this east side was the famous side of the Chief--the side which every passer-by on the prairie saw and wondered at. With our glasses we had mapped a course which seemed not impossible; was it not better to meet our king face to face than to steal on him from behind? Besides, this wonderful weather might not last long enough for us to reach the other side. And so our final conclusion was to try the east face.

Half way up the sheer face of the cliff was divided horizontally by a broad, steep shelf which ran nearly the length of the mountain. That shelf could clearly be crossed at any place; the difficulty would lie with the walls below and above it. The lower one was bad enough at best, but it was easy to recognize as least bad a place where a slope of shale abutted against it, shortening it some 300 feet. The upper wall in general seemed even worse, but it was furrowed by two deep chimneys, side by side, one of which led into the mountain's well-known cleft. The other chimney seemed to lead directly to the summit, but its lower mouth was inaccessible--cut off by overhanging cliff. Our plan, therefore, if we could ever reach the halfway shelf, was to use the first chimney in the beginning, then try to find a way around the dividing shoulder into the second, then follow that to the top. And at 9 o'clock we began on the lower wall.

Of course, the work which followed was not so difficult as it had promised from below--rock work rarely is--but it thoroughly taxed our slender experience, and, for a single man without a rope, must have been far worse. The Doctor and I took turns in leading, carrying up or having thrown to us from below a rope, on which the others then ascended. Most of the difficulty was thus confined to one man, and he could often be assisted from beneath. We were not skilled enough in the use of the rope to risk tying ourselves together.

Two hundred feet up came our first trouble, perhaps the worst of the day. We were sidling along a narrow shelf, with arms outstretched against the wall above, when we reached a spot where the shelf was broken by a round protruding shoulder. Beyond it the ledge commenced again and seemed to offer our only way upward. I was leading at the time, and, after examining it, turned back to a wider portion of the shelf for consultation. It was not a place one would care to try if there was an alternative.

We braced the Indian against the wall, and his skillful hand sent the lariat whirling up at a sharp rock above our heads. Time after time the noose settled fairly around it, but found no neck to hold it, and came sliding down. Then, almost before we knew it, the Doctor had run out along the ledge to the shoulder and had started around. For a moment he hung, griping the rounded surface with arms and knees; then a dangerous wriggle and he was on the other side.

Under his coaching the Indian and I followed; but Fox, when half way, lost his head, and barely succeeded in getting back to the starting point. He would not try again. The poor fellow's moccasins had lost some of their nails and he had slipped once or twice that morning, thus destroying the nerve of one who had at other times shown himself a good climber. But of the Indian's companionship for the rest of the day we were now sure.

Again, when near the top of that first wall, and when the halfway ledge seemed almost within our grasp, the shallow cleft--up which we were scrambling--ended in a deep pocket in the cliff's face, with no outlet above. The Doctor tried it at one corner, but the treacherous crumbling rock warned him back. I tried it at another, but was stopped by an overhang in the cliff. No help for it but to go back and try to find a way around.

Fifty feet below we landed on a small shelf running horizontally along the mountain's face, and, after following it northward a few moments, we found another channel leading up. The Doctor started to investigate it, while Billy and I continued on slowly looking for a better. Almost immediately, however, we heard the Doctor shout "All right," and, following him, came out at last upon the great halfway shelf of the mountain.

This was a steep slope of shale, which seemed in places quite ready to slide in an avalanche of loose rock over the edge of the cliff below; but the relief of being out upon it, and able once more to stand upright without the sensation of a wall against your face, apparently trying to shove you outward from your slender foothold, was simply indescribable.

After crossing the shelf and eating our lunch in the mouth of the first or left-hand chimney, we attacked the upper wall. Following up the chimney a short distance, we found at last a narrow ledge leading to the right, and, creeping around on it, I looked into the right-hand chimney above its forbidding mouth. It led as a broad, almost easy, staircase clear to the top of the wall above, and for the first time we felt as if our king were really ours.

Six or seven hundred feet more of steady work, and we could feel the summit breeze beginning to blow down the narrow mouth of the chimney. Billy was then sent to the front, and at half past one the first Piegan stepped out on the summit of the Chief Mountain.

It is a long ridge of disintegrated rock, flanked at either end by lower rounded turrets, and at its highest part is no wider than a New England stone wall. On the opposite western side the cliffs fell away as on our own, but they seemed shorter, were composed of looser rock, and far down below we could see steep slopes of shale meeting them part way. After we had picked out our various landmarks in the wonderful outlook about us, and I had made my record from compass and barometer, we pushed our way carefully along to the highest point of the narrow ridge, in order to mark it with a cairn of rocks. Just as we reached it, the Indian, who was still in the lead, suddenly stopped and pointed to the ground. There, on the very summit of Chief Mountain, safely anchored by rocks from the effect of wind or tempest, lay a small, weather-beaten bison skull. It was certainly one of the very oldest I have ever seen. Even in the pure air of that mountain top it had rotted away until there was little else than the frontal bone and the stubs on which had been the horns. Billy picked it up and handed it to us quietly, saying with perfect conviction, "The old Flathead's pillow!"

We left the skull where it had been found. Much as we should have treasured it as a token of that day, the devotion of the old warrior who had brought it was an influence quite sufficient to protect this memorial of his visit. We shared his reverence far too much to allow us to remove its offering. And then, too, as Billy suggested, we were still on top of the Chief, and the Chief had certainly been very forbearing to us. Those long walls, now darkened by the afternoon shade, those narrow ledges whence the downward climber could no longer avoid seeing the stone he dislodged bound, after two or three lengthening jumps, clear to the pedestal below, loomed very suggestively before his mind. But the Chief still remained gracious, and Billy worked even more steadily and sure-footedly going down than in the morning. We had all gained confidence, and besides we were certain of our course. By 5 o'clock we had reached the last bad place--where Fox had left us--and, after avoiding that by swinging down hand over hand on the rope from a ledge above, it was only a few moments to the bottom.

That night, after we were all safe in camp, and the great cliff beamed down on us more kindly than ever in the moonlight, the Doctor and I decided that we had been more favored than the old Flathead warrior, for the spirit of our mountain had been with us even before we reached its top.

And for our success an explanation beyond our physical powers seemed necessary to others also; for, when a few days later we returned to the ranch in the St. Mary's Valley, Billy, who had preceded us, met us with the mien of the prophet who is denied by his own, and told us that his cousins, the Bloods from across the border, had suggested that, when next he returned from a trip to the range, he should bring them a likelier story than that he had climbed the east face of the Chief Mountain.

Henry L. Stimson.

The Cougar

It was upwards of twelve years ago that I had been down to one of the Rio Grande River towns herding up Mexicans, whom I expected to aid me in discovering gold where none existed. On my way down I had run across a mountain lion making off with a lamb, and shot and secured him after a little strategic maneuvering. On the return journey, after I had hired as many of the greasers as I desired, I camped at night about twenty miles from home, in a log cabin that had lost the door, the roof and all the chinking from between the logs.

There was no reason to fear wild beasts--and the cabin would have been no protection for me even if there had been; nor was the structure any protection from the numerous cut-throat, horse-stealing Mexicans who flourished in that section of the country as thickly as cactus. However, I lariated my horse and threw down my blankets in this tumble-down shack, and turned in. I have quite a habit of sleeping on my back, and I was awakened some time in the night by a feeling of oppression on my chest. Having been accustomed to life in a country where the Indians were rampant, and where the wise man on awakening looked about him before stirring, I opened my eyes without moving, and there, standing directly on my breast, looking me squarely in the face, was a skunk, with its nose not, I swear, six inches from my own.

It was a bright moonlight night, and I could see that the little devil was of the kind whose bite is said to convey hydrophobia. But that did not worry me; it was not the bite I feared. I realized perfectly that if I moved I might get myself into trouble. I knew that the only thing for me to do was to let the skunk gambol over me until he wearied of the pastime and went out of the cabin.

I have a lurking suspicion that that skunk knew I was awake and in mental agony; for, after looking me in the face, he ran down my body on one leg and then up again, actually smelling of one of my ears; and then he trotted off me on to the floor of the cabin, where he nosed about awhile, then up again on my body; and, after sprinting a few seconds over my person, he went down and out of the cabin.

So soon as he had disappeared out of the door I jumped to my feet and, drawing my gun, rushed out after him. He was plainly visible just to the right of the cabin, and I blazed away. Immediately after I had shot him I regretted it, for I had to move camp.

The next day, on my way back to camp, I journeyed over a divide that was more or less noted as a den for mountain lions; though to designate any particular locality as a "den" for cougars is incorrect, for it is not an animal that remains in any one place for any great length of time. He is a wandering pirate, who makes no one district his home for any long period.

However, this especial divide was said to harbor more of them than any other; or, at least, there were more signs of them, and more were reported to be started from there by hunters than elsewhere in the territory. Be that as it may, on the particular day of which I write I accidentally ran across the only cougar I ever have killed which gave me a fight and stampeded my horse, so that I was obliged to foot it into camp.

I do not think the bronco is as fearful of the cougar as of the bear, at least my experience has not been such. I have had a mustang jump pretty nearly from under me on winding a bear, and I have wasted minutes upon minutes in getting him near the carcass of a dead one, that I might pack home a bit of bruin's highly-scented flesh, and I never had any similar experience where the cougar was concerned. I have had my pony evince reluctance to approach the slain lion, but not show the absolute terror which seizes them in the neighborhood of bear.

My experience at this particular time, as I say, was novel in two respects--first, the fright with which my bronco was stricken; and second, the fight shown by the cougar. I had reached the top of the divide, and was picking my way across the fallen timber, which so often blocks the trail over the tops of divides in New Mexico. I remember distinctly having gained a clear spot that was pretty well filled with wild violets, which grew in great profusion thereabouts, and was guiding my pony that I should not trample upon them; for in that God-forsaken district, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, it seemed too bad to crush the life out of the dainty little flowers that hold up their heads to the New Mexico sunshine.

Without warning, my bronco, which was traveling along at a fox-trot, stopped suddenly, and looking up I saw, not more than fifty yards away, about as large a mountain lion as I had ever encountered, standing motionless and looking at us with utmost complacency. To throw myself out of the saddle and draw my Sharps-forty from the saddle holster was the work of a very few seconds. Throwing the bridle rein over my arm, I slipped in a cartridge, and was just pulling down on him when the cougar started off at a swinging trot to one side at right angles to where he had stood, and through some small quaking aspens. Without thinking of the bridle being over my arm, I knelt quickly in order to get a better sight of the animal, and almost simultaneously pressed the trigger.