Part 6 (1/2)
By the time I got back to camp it was nearly dark and Doc and Bob were waiting supper for me. We find our fireless cooker and kerosene stove to be real luxuries in this sort of a country. We really live high (comparatively speaking); our appet.i.tes are always good and Bob rarely gets up anything that doesn't taste fine. Just now our larder contains honey, beans, bread, eggs, oatmeal, tea, bacon, prunes, seeded raisins, and crackers.
We turned in early as usual and were up before it was really light.
Doc missed getting a shot at a gray wolf right near camp. He said he took it for a boulder at first and so paid no attention to it; when too late, he saw it take shape and steal away.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A GLIMPSE OF CASTLE VALLEY]
We left camp at six-thirty. The trail was on the west side of the valley and right under the mountains, which gave us a good opportunity to study them. The scenery was really weird. The mountains took the shape of castles, not imaginary castles, but real ones. A painter could not paint anything more natural, and they were all different.
Each castle stood guard over its particular part of the valley, and all day and for several days we had a never-ending source of entertainment in this sort of scenery. It was on such an immense scale and combined with the magic colors of the desert country, that we were continually gazing at it and not at the desert underfoot, and so missed a good many chances to shoot coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions that were invariably dropping out of sight into a gulley or behind the brush, about the time our attention was called to them.
One particularly exciting incident happened before we were really started this morning. In crossing a wash the wagon had to make a detour, but Bob on Dixie rode straight across, and after topping a rise of ground he got off and sat down on a rock to wait for us to catch up. As we came over the rise I saw Dixie, but could not see Bob on account of the brush. She was browsing on the bushes. Just beyond her I saw a mountain lion, right out in the open, quietly stealing down toward her, evidently not seeing Bob and thinking there might be a colt there it could kill.
The speed with which I threw on the brake and called to Doc to get his Winchester sort of fl.u.s.trated Doc and also fl.u.s.trated the lion. It started off on a trot at right angles down the mesa as Doc pulled out his 30-30 and got ready for action. His first shot just grazed its back at about three hundred yards, and then the fun began. Bob jumped into view to see what had happened; the lion started for Colorado. Not in any reasonable manner, however. It seemed to be shot out of a gun, and Doc swung his Winchester and pumped three more shots after it. All of them seemed to be in the general direction the lion was going, but they only served to make him swerve and run faster, if that were possible.
When at last he had disappeared from sight in the dim distance,--he actually ran out of sight on bare ground,--and the smoke had blown away, Bob called out, ”What was it?”
Doc said, ”Didn't you see it?”
”Well,” said Bob, ”I am not sure whether I did or not.”
I called over to Bob and said, ”I saw it start anyway, and what you saw must have been what I saw start.”
”Gosh all hemlock!”--or something like that--I think Doc remarked; ”I never saw anything with four legs run as fast before,”--and I am sure he never did, nor any one else.
I could not help laughing, although Doc seemed quite chagrined to think he had not killed the lion. I admitted he had missed the first shot, but after that no bullet could have caught up to the beast, no matter how well aimed.
After this episode nothing especially interesting happened, and we soon reached Emery, not quite three days from Salina. We must have made about thirty miles yesterday afternoon and this morning, so we feel quite satisfied that we did not go a hundred miles to get around that canyon, although I guess we were more lucky than wise.
The little Mormon settlement called Emery is scattered all over the mesa, and has plenty of water to irrigate from five to eight hundred acres, which is enough to support the town. We stopped at the hotel for dinner, just to see what it was like, and, while we had plenty to eat, we seemed to create quite a stir. We were the only guests, and unexpected at that, so the two girls who had been left in charge while the old folks were on a trip to some railroad town, were quite a bit fl.u.s.tered. We stayed here until four-thirty in the afternoon, walking about and looking the natives over, and incidentally waiting for the postmaster to show up. In these little, out-of-the-way places the postoffice is liable to be run by somebody who appears for duty only when the mail comes in or goes out, unless he is sent for.
I put in part of the time trying to make a horse trade in the street in front of the store. I didn't want to trade horses, but I made the other fellow think he had come very near trading me a bay mare, about Dixie's size, for Kate, and so I got a line on what I could buy her for; but Doc thought her a trifle too small, so when the postman arrived we disagreed on price, and parted.
After calling for our mail we started on. We had driven only about five miles when we came to some gra.s.s, which we never pa.s.s without taking toll of, and as it was about camping time anyway we turned the horses loose to graze while we made camp.
Tuesday, June 21, was quite a day. In the first place, we met a big gray wolf about one hour from camp and I shot him through the flanks with Doc's 30-30, but missed him with two more shots before he dropped into a ravine. He was bleeding so badly that he did not go far, but as we were in a hurry and he was working up toward the mountains we concluded to let him die in peace, and so did not follow him far, although his trail was painfully plain.
Next we came to a field of white poppies. From a gray wolf's b.l.o.o.d.y trail to white poppies does not seem odd in this desert country, although now that I am writing it the change seems rather startling.
The California poppy we admired greatly, but this immense field of white ones seemed, if anything, more beautiful.
In two or three miles more we came to the top of a hill overlooking the town of Ferron. Here we had a splendid view of the mountains to the west, with a Moorish castle looking down on us, gray b.u.t.tes below us, and in the distance the town of Ferron with its bright green alfalfa field, Carolina poplars, and cottonwood trees. This was such a grand color scheme that I took a picture of it, forgetting that color does not show in a photograph and that immense distances are beyond duplication by the ordinary lens, at least, and so got a very unsatisfactory picture.
Pa.s.sing through Ferron we made camp by an irrigation ditch, under a cottonwood tree, and did some laundry work, which was put to dry while we ate lunch, after which we drove on into Castledale, stopping at Jim Jeff's Camp House, making twenty miles for the day. Here we decided to stay a day and rest the horses, so after feeding them all we turned Bess and Kate into his pasture, keeping Dixie up so we could take better care of her neck, which was quite sore.
Castledale we found to be the largest town in Castle Valley. There is Emery on Muddy Creek, Ferron on Ferron Creek, and Castledale on Cottonwood Creek, and beyond is a town called Huntington on Huntington Creek. These creeks or brooks are all supposed to flow into the Cottonwood farther down, but each little town takes most of the water into its irrigation ditches as the water leaves the mountains, and so very little of it ever gets far on its way to the valley below, except in freshet times. Any one expecting to find water in these creeks below the towns is usually a tenderfoot, and needs a water barrel, and some good advice. We did not have the advice, but we had the water barrel and so far have not suffered for good water.
Our camp was in Jim Jeff's yard. He had a house for the accommodation of freighters, but we preferred the ground. However, we did make away with a great many of his eggs and some green stuff from the garden.
We put in the next day, Wednesday, cleaning up, writing, and making a few purchases. I remembered that this was the day my sister was to have been married, and here I was, fifty miles from the railroad in a desert town, unable to telephone or telegraph, and I had expected to be able to send her a message. Doc and I were walking down the road to the store, when on the side porch of a house I saw the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's long distance sign nailed to a post.
”Hold on,” I said, ”there is a familiar look to that sign; just you go on and I will follow it up and see whether it is going to do me any good or not.”
So into the house I went. Here I found a girl who was running all the telephone business for the town and surrounding country. She said the line ran to some town on the railroad, the name of which I didn't catch, but that didn't interest me. What I wanted to know was if I could talk to the station agent at this town, and when I found I could, I said, ”Well, you just call him up quick. I want to say something to him real sudden.” In about an hour I got that message off to my sister, which shows how suddenly things happen in that country.