by Zane Grey
I was too tired to tease our captive lions that evening; even the glowing camp-fire tempted me in vain, and I crawled into my bed with eyes already glued shut.
A heavy weight on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first, when only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my bed, then hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was dropping off again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to open wide. The black night had faded to the gray of dawn. The sound I recognized at once to be the Navajo’s morning chant. I lay there and listened. Soft and monotonous, wild and swelling, but always low and strange, the savage song to the break of day was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I wondered what the literal meaning of his words could have been. The significance needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away, to the brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the morning sun, to the Giver of Life—to these the Indian chanted his prayer.
Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the Navajo with his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the trees, the rocks, the light and sun, and he prayed to that which was divinely helpful to him in all the mystery of his unintelligible life.
We did not crawl out that morning as early as usual, for it was to be a day of rest. When we did, a mooted question arose—whether we or the hounds were the more crippled. Ranger did not show himself; Don could just walk and that was all; Moze was either too full or too tired to move; Sounder nursed a foot and Jude favored her lame leg.
After lunch we brightened up somewhat and set ourselves different tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began to turn the camp topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate it. The wire, however, was not to be found. This was a calamity, for, as we asked each other, how could we muzzle lions without wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy leather straps which I had bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had disappeared. We had only one collar left, the one that Jones had put on the red lioness.
Whereupon we began to blame each other, to argue, to grow heated and naturally from that to become angry. It seems a fatality of campers along a wild trail, like explorers in an unknown land, to be prone to fight. If there is an explanation of this singular fact, it must be that men at such time lose their poise and veneer of civilization; in brief, they go back. At all events we had it hot and heavy, with the center of attack gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always losing something, naturally we united in force against him.
Fortunately, we were interrupted by yells from the Navajo off in the woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs preceded his appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten a bridle on Marc, and from the way the big stallion hurled his huge bulk over logs and through thickets, it appeared evident he meant to usurp Jim’s ambition and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett yell, the Indian turned Marc toward camp. The horse slowed down when he neared the glade and tried to buck. But Navvy kept his head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to ungovernable rage and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the dogs’ shelter and thundered down the ridge.
Now the Navajo, with the bridle in his hand was thoroughly at home. He was getting his revenge on Marc, and he would have kept his seat on a wild mustang, but Marc swerved suddenly under a low branch of a pine, sweeping the Indian off.
When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously hurt, perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay.
Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or muscle, he certainly appeared dead.
“Badly hurt,” said Emett, “probably back broken. I have seen it before from just such accidents.”
“Oh no!” cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak. Jim, who always wanted Navvy to be a dead Indian, looked profoundly sorry.
“He’s a dead Indian, all right,” replied Emett.
We rose from our stooping postures and stood around, uncertain and deeply grieved, until a mournful groan from Navvy afforded us much relief.
“That’s your dead Indian,” exclaimed Jones.
Emett stooped again and felt the Indian’s back and got in reward another mournful groan.
“It’s his back,” said Emett, and true to his ruling passion, forever to minister to the needs of horses, men, and things, he began to rub the Indian and call for the liniment.
Jim went to fetch it, while I, still believing the Navvy to be dangerously hurt, knelt by him and pulled up his shirt, exposing the hollow of his brown back.
“Here we are,” said Jim, returning on the run with the bottle.
“Pour some on,” replied Emett.
Jim removed the cork and soused the liniment all over the Indian’s back.
“Don’t waste it,” remonstrated Emett, starting to rub Navvy’s back.
Then occurred a most extraordinary thing. A convulsion seemed to quiver through the Indian’s body; he rose at a single leap, and uttering a wild, piercing yell broke into a run. I never saw an Indian or anybody else run so fleetly. Yell after yell pealed back to us.
Absolutely dumfounded we all gazed at each other.
“That’s your dead Indian!” ejaculated Jim.
“What the hell!” exclaimed Emett, who seldom used such language.
“Look here!” cried Jones, grabbing the bottle. “See! Don’t you see it?”
Jim fell face downward and began to shake.
“What?” shouted Emett and I together.
“Turpentine, you idiots! Turpentine! Jim brought the wrong bottle!”
In another second three more forms lay stretched out on the sward, and the forest rang with sounds of mirth.
VII
That night the wind switched and blew cold from the north, and so strong that the camp-fire roared like a furnace. “More snow” was the verdict of all of us, and in view of this, I invited the Navajo to share my tent.
“Sleepie-me,” I said to him.
“Me savvy,” he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed with me.
Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations, which struck me as being singularly selfish considering they would not be inconvenienced in any way.
“Why not?” I asked. “It’s a cold night. There’ll be frost if not snow.”
“Shore you’ll get ’em,” said Jim.
“There never was an Indian that didn’t have ’em,” added Jones.
“What?” I questioned.
They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance as to what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my mind. When I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy. Moze lay at my feet as usual and he growled so deep that I could not but think he, too, resented the addition to my small tent.
“Mista Gay!” came in the Indian’s low voice.
“Well Navvy?” I asked.
“Sleepie—sleepie?”
“Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired. Are you?”
“Me savvy—mucha sleepie—mucha—no bueno.”
I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad. He did not awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent was light and he had gone. I found my companions up and doing.
We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun, a red ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn to gold. No snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the ground. The hounds, wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they detested, trotted in front. Don showed no effects of his great run down the sliding slope after the red lioness; it was one of his remarkable qualities that he recuperated so quickly. Ranger was a little stiff, and Sounder favored his injured foot. The others were as usual.
Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had passed the edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead, he turned his horse up the bank.
We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest, which we entered without having seen the hounds show interest in anything. Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed lion tracks, many of them, but too old to ca
rry a scent. Even North Hollow with its regular beaten runway failed to win a murmur from the pack.
“Spread out,” said Jones, “and look for tracks. I’ll keep the center and hold in the hounds.”
Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the breadth of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open sage flats inclined to the rim. In one of those flats I came upon a broken sage bush, the grass being thick thereabout. I discovered no track but dismounted and scrutinized the surroundings carefully. A heavy body had been dragged across the sage, crushing it. The ends of broken bushes were green, the leaves showed bruises.
I began to feel like Don when he scented game. Leading my mustang I slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an occasional downtrodden bush or tuft of grass. As I neared the cedars again Foxie snorted. Under the first tree I found a ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of grayish hairs and a split skull. The bones, were yet wet; two long doe ears were still warm. Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even a well pressed imprint of a lion’s body where he had rolled or lain.
The two yells I sent ringing into the forest were productive of interesting results. Answers came from near and far. Then, what with my calling and the replies, the forest rang so steadily with shrill cries that the echoes had no chance to follow.
An elephant in the jungle could not have caused more crashing and breaking of brush than did Emett as he made his way to me. He arrived from the forest just as Jim galloped across the flat. Mutely I held up the two long ears.
“Get on your horse!” cried Jim after one quick glance at the spread of bones and hair.
It was well he said that, for I might have been left behind. I ran to Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared among the sage and a string of yelps split the air.
“It’s Don!” yelled Jim.
Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight for us! He passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and disappeared like a gleam under the gloomy cedars.
We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by. Jones closed in on us from the left, and in a few minutes we were strung out behind Emett, fighting the branches, dodging and swerving, hugging the saddle, and always sending out our sharp yells.
The race was furious but short. The three of us coming up together found Emett dismounted on the extreme end of West Point.
“The hounds have gone down,” he said, pointing to the runway.
We all listened to the meaning bays.
“Shore they’ve got him up!” asserted Jim. “Like as not they found him under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now fellows, I’ll go down. It might be a good idea for you to spread along the rim.”
With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to the rim as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often forced us to circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls below, kept pace with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused Jones to dispatch Emett on the gallop for the next runway at North Hollow.
Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of the promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my mustang I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded through the sage and cedar to the rim.
Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very sharp and bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags with a crumbling bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down like giant steps. From one of these I watched below. The slope here under the wall was like the side of a rugged mountain. Somewhere down among the dark patches of cedar and the great blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the lion, but I could not see one of them.
The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this was with brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might climb down. Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding, clinging to what afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of stone hid the sky from me part of the way. I came out a hundred feet below upon a second promontory of huge slabs of yellow stone. Over these I clambered, to sit with my feet swinging over the last one.
Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the canyon. In the soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow walls, the black domes were less harsh than in the full noonday sun, purer than in the tender shadow of twilight. Below me were slopes and slides divided by ravines full of stones as large as houses, with here and there a lonesome leaning crag, giving irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the rolling, weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full of fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers wonderfully growing in crannies.
Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance and a thought. The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and eager eyes to the open spaces of stone and slide below. Luck was mine as usual; the hounds were working up toward me. How I strained my sight! Hearing a single cry I looked eastward to see Jones silhouetted against the blue on a black promontory. He seemed a giant primeval man overlooking the ruin of a former world. I signalled him to make for my point.
Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide. He was at fault but hunting hard. Jude and Sounder bayed off to his left. I heard Don’s clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air, seemingly to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not locate him. Ranger disappeared. Then for a time I only heard Jim. Moze was next to appear and he, too, was upward bound. A jumble of stone hid him, and then Ranger again showed. Evidently he wanted to get around the bottom of a low crag, for he jumped and jumped only to fall back.
Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag. Stretched out upon the top of it was the long, slender body of a lion.
“Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!” I yelled till my lungs failed me.
“Where are you?” came from above.
“Here! Here!” I cried seeing Jones on the rim. “Come down. Climb down the crack. The lion is here; on top of that round crag. He’s fooled the hounds and they can’t find him.”
“I see him! I see him!” yelled Jones. Then he roared out a single call for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the curved broken rim wall, opening up echoes which clapped like thunder.
While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay with head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle. What a place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing down the broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have remained safe from pursuit.
Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps. I could not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the crag. I leaned over as far as I dared. At that moment among the varied and thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of hard, panting breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity. As Jones had set in motion bushels of stone and had already scraped his feet over the rocks behind me I thought the forced respiration came from him. When I turned he was yet far off—too far for me to hear him breathe. I thought this circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.
On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle blast, and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent up the thrice welcome news of a treed lion.
“There’re two! There’re two!” I yelled to Jones, now working down to my right.
“He’s treed down here. I’ve got him spotted!” replied Jones. “You stay there and watch your lion. Yell for Emett.”
Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim far below to the left sent me an answer.
The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with Jones and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone, waiting impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one lion and I watched the other.
Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could have gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life about him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding to the throb and race of his wild blood.
Emett did not come
. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes. No doubt he needed his breath. He came into sight just to the left of our position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to toil up the other. I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds hailed him.
“Steer to your left Jim!” I called. “There’s a lion on that crag above you. He might jump. Round the cliff to the left—Jones is there!”
The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to the sound rising from below without being able to see what happened. My lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had crouched closer to his crag, evidently believing he was unseen, which obviously made it imperative for me to keep my seat and hold him there as long as possible.
But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.
“Hyar Moze—get out of that. Catch him—hold him! Damn these rotten limbs. Hand me a pole—Jones, back down—back down! he’s comin’—Hi! Hi! Whoop! Boo—o! There—now you’ve got him! No, no; it slipped! Now! Look out, Jim, from under—he’s going to jump!”
A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of yelps with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones’ last words. Then two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first was the lion, the second was Don. The rest of the pack came tumbling helter-skelter in their wake. Following them raced Jim in long kangaroo leaps, with Jones in the rear, running for all he was worth. The animated and musical procession passed up out of the ravine and gradually lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed altogether from my jealous sight.
On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed their quarry again, as was easy to tell by their change from sharp intermittent yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus. Then presently all quieted down, and for long moments at a time the still silence enfolded the slope. Shouts now and then floated up on the wind and an occasional bark.
I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a few minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag and never moved.
I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks of the Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far beyond to where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther still to the Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the distance.
