Daniel Carter Beard

“ The eagle screamed, descended like a thunderbolt and skilfully avoiding the branching antlers, struck the bull, driving one talon into the neck and the other into the back, flapping its huge wings as it tore with its beak at the body of the elk like a trained “bear coote.”
I was thunderstruck. The evident partnership of the wolves and bird needed explanation and it was not long in coming. A shrill whistle pierced the air, the black wolves immediately ceased to worry the elk, the eagle soared overhead, and for an instant the elk stood confused, then leaped high in the air and fell dead. ”

“ It was difficult for me to realize that it was Big Pete himself who had given vent to that shuddering howl, and now the danger was over I pleaded with him to give another exhibition of his skill in wolf calls.
The good-natured fellow at first seemed reluctant to repeat his performance, but at length consented and put his hands to his mouth, forming a trumpet, then bent forward his body, stooping so low that his face was was below his waist, after which he began again that wild cry which so closely resembles in sentiment and tone the shriek of the wind. ”

“ Not only are Big Pete’s revolvers gold mounted, but the shaft of his keen-edged knife is rich with figures, rings, and stars filed from gold coins and set in the horn. The very stock of his long, single-barreled rifle is inlaid like an Arab’s gun, and, as for his buckskin hunting suit, it is a mass of embroidery and colored quills from his beaded moccasins to the fringed cape of his shirt. ”

“ I was in a rough basin-shaped depression among the mountain peaks, and I sat on a large rock with my back to a black chasm. From my elevated position I could see a long distance. Strange fancies creep into one’s head on such occasions and play havoc with previous well-founded beliefs. To me, poor fool of a tenderfoot, Big Pete had melted into the thinnest of thin air, such as is only found in high altitudes, and somehow I wondered whether the Wild Hunter had had anything to do with it. ”

“ Then burst upon the stillness of the night such an uproar that for a moment I thought the whole pack was mixed in the fight, but at length I heard Pluto’s snarling, rumbling growl, answered by the distant howl of the wolf pack, followed immediately by a close-by yell that chilled my blood; after this came Big Pete’s war cry, then the crash of falling objects, shrieks and growls and savage yells. ”

“ We were not roped together like mountain climbers in the Swiss or Tyrolean Alps; we got the real thrills by using our own hands and feet without ice pick, staff or hobnailed shoes.
But Big Pete never hesitated and I followed him without a word, and when the trail led along the edge of a dizzy height I could look at the middle of Big Pete’s broad back and then my head would not swim. It required quick and good judgment to tell just how much of a slant made a loose stone unsafe to step upon. ”

“ When the myriads of bright stars would twinkle in the blue black sky or the great round-faced moon climb over the mountain tops to see what was doing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then the big pack-rats, with squirrel-like tails, would troop out from their secret caves and invade the camp. ”

“ Moose Ear, the silent, wrinkled old Indian, with lighted candles made of buffalo tallow, guided Big Pete and me up the broad skilfully built puncheon stairway to the upper story of the surprisingly large ranch house, where he showed us to our rooms, rooms which were a joy to look upon. Each was furnished with a heavy, hand-made four-posted bedstead, which in spite of the massiveness was beautifully made, and I wondered at the patience of the Wild Hunter in teaching the Indians their craftmanship. ”

“ There lay Big Pete Darlinkel, dead or unconscious, and within ten feet of him stood the giant bear surrounded by a vicious pack of gaunt red-mouthed wolves. The bear made a rush and a shadow passed over the ground; I heard the sound of a large body rushing swiftly through the air, and an immense eagle struck the bear like a thunderbolt; at the same instant the wolves attacked him from all sides ”

“ To have one’s nose all but broken, both eyes blackened and a twisted ankle is a sad misfortune wherever it occurs, but when such a thing happens to a fellow many weary miles from the nearest human habitation and in a howling wilderness it might be considered anything but pleasant. Yet, strange as it may appear, among the most pleasant and precious memories I have stored away in my mind, only to be tapped upon special occasions, is the memory of the glorious days spent nursing my bruises and lolling around that far-away camp. ”

“ It was no longer the upright statuesque Pete the Mountaineer, but Peter the Trailer, all of whose faculties were concentrated upon the ground. With a swinging gait the human bloodhound traveled swiftly and silently along the edge of the crevasse, noting every bunch of moss, fragment of stone, drift of snow or bit of moist earth, reading the shorthand notes of Nature with facility which far excelled the ability of my own stenographer to read her own notes when the latter are a few hours old. ”

“ Big Pete’s displeasure and in spite of my dread of being thought a dude tenderfoot, I changed my position, rubbed life into my arm and assumed an easier pose.
In front of us was a small lake, deep, dark and unruffled. All around the edge was a natural wharf formed from the gigantic trunks of trees which had fallen for ages into the lake and been washed by wind and waves and forced by winter ice into such regular order and position along the shore that their arrangement looked like the work of men. Back of this wharf and all about was the wilderness of silent wood ”

“ Big Pete looked at me solemnly for a while, ran over the cartridges in his belt and went through all those familiar unconscious motions which betokened danger ahead, and said, “Le-loo, you are a quare critter; you’re not afraid of all the werwolves, medicine ba’rs and ghosts in this world or the next, but tarnally afeared of live varmints like grizzly bars—one would think you had no religion, but, gosh all hemlock! If you can face a bear-man or a werwolf, even though all the Hy-as Ecutocks of the mountains show fight, I’ll be cornfed if I don’t stand by ye! ”

“ Rising abruptly from the prairie was a frowning precipice a thousand or more feet high and above and beyond the top of this cliff, the mountains.
When Big Pete told me that his park was “walled in” he told me the mildest sort of truth; the prairie is the bottom of a wide canyon, in fact everything seems to indicate that the whole park had settled, sunk—“taken a drop” of a thousand or more feet; forming what miners would call a fault. ”

“ A hawk in pursuit of a barnyard fowl will follow it into the open door of the farmhouse; the hound in pursuit of the fox cares not for the approaching locomotive—being possessed by the instinct to kill—nothing is of importance to them but the capture of the game in sight. A man following a buck is governed by a like singleness of purpose.
For this reason I was scrambling along the knife-like edge of the ridge, with death in the steep treacherous slide rock on one side, death in the steep green glacier ice on the other side, and torture and wounds under my feet. ”

“ While my thoughts were still busy trying to fathom the cause of Pete’s untimely mirth, the long-drawn howl of the big timber wolf floated over the valley and sent a new lot [169] of shivers down my back. It was the rallying call used by the wolves to call the band together when game is in sight. The sound increased in volume until it reverberated among the crags like the voice of a winter’s storm, and then it gradually died away. Big Pete was not only a good mimic but he proved himself to be a ventriloquist of no mean ability ”

“ From the glaciers up among the clouds numerous streams of melted ice came dashing down the sides of the mountain range, fanciful cascades leaping without fear from most stupendous heights spreading out in long horse-tail falls over the face of the cliff, doing everything but looking real. ”

“ The ledge indicated by Big Pete as the landing place of the phenomenal jumper might possibly have offered a foothold for a bighorn or goat, but I could not believe that any human being could jump twenty feet to a crumbling trifle of a ledge on the face of a precipice, and not only retain a foothold there, but run up the face of the rock like a fly on a window-pane. ”

“ If the Wild Hunter was indeed my father, he certainly was a woodcrafter and scout to bring pride to a fellow’s heart, for I doubted not that the Indian boy was his retainer because the porcupine quill decorations on his buckskin shirt had the same peculiar pattern as that on the wamus of the Wild Hunter himself as well as on the collar of the pet sheep I had killed, and also on the buckskin bag of gold. ”

“ In a few moments Big Pete was up and over the edge of the rock and hidden from my view.
[143] Seizing the long-handled shepherd’s crook, I caught the dangling end of the lariat, and was soon scrambling up the face of the cliff, leaving a trail which the veriest novice would not fail to notice and sending showers of the crumbling stones down the path taken by the knife; it was several minutes before I had clambered over the face of the projecting crag and was safe across the black chasm which lay athwart our trail. ”

“ Could this strange freak that Big Pete saw from the top of the painted Butte possess that Patrick Mullen rifle? If so did he know anything about the whereabouts of my father? It is not uncommon for people suffering from a mental breakdown to flee to the country or wilderness and there live the life of a recluse, and from my father’s last letter it was evident that he had had a nervous breakdown from anxiety and brooding over the loss of my mother, to whom he evidently was devotedly attached. ”

“ We have but one trip to make through this world, and the more we see the more we will know at the end of the journey. I am as curious as a prong-horned antelope when there is a mystery, so put your nose to the ground, my good friend, and find the spot where this Mr. Werwolf, witch, or bear flies the canyon, and maybe, like the husband of ‘The Witch of Fife,’ we may find the ‘black crook shell,’ and with its aid fly out of this ’lum. ”

“ He seemed, however, perfectly at home in this border town, and I noted that the most hard-boiled [27] and toughest men in the crowd treated him with marked respect and deference.
Pete was a wilderness fop and a dandy, and evidently was as careful of his clothes as a West Point cadet. In dress he affected the old-fashioned picturesque garb of the mountains. His appearance filled me with wonder and admiration; he stood six feet two or three inches in his moccasins, straight as an arrow and lithe as a cat. ”

“ The strange appearance of this big, powerful, smooth shaven man in a buckskin hunting costume with a retinue of black wolves and a trained eagle, the mysterious manner of his hunting and his coming and going, aroused in me great interest and curiosity and I could realize the effect it evidently had upon Big Pete’s superstitious mind in spite of the fact that the big fellow was accustomed to facing almost any sort of danger. ”

“ Pluto’s mother was a pure black wolf of a mean disposition, and his father the half-breed son of a Great Dane and a she-wolf. He is the fiercest and most bloodthirsty beast in the whole pack, he hates me with the intense hatred of his wolfish nature, he hates me because he knows that I am the master of the pack, the real leader, and he is jealous. ”

“ The pack is the secret of my whole success; my power over them first won the allegiance of the Indians, won their admiration and their respect. They know that I could turn those wolves upon them at any moment, but they also know that I would not think of doing such an act and they are human and love me; the wolves are brutes and not susceptible to kindness. The wolves hate the Redmen as they hate me, but they supplied us all with food, they secured for us our winter meat while the men worked to build houses and clear the land, and thus made it possible for us to start this settlement. ”

“ I was about to start to my feet when I felt Big Pete’s restraining hand on my shoulder, and not until then did I realize that the cave was crowded with the shaggy white Rocky Mountain goats, and not weird, white-bearded old men. Few persons can truly say that they have been within arm’s length of a flock of these timid and almost unapproachable animals ”

“ The reason, that being locked into Big Pete’s park in the mountains struck me as being very serious, was because I realized that although the park was extensive it was completely surrounded by a practically unsurmountable barrier of rugged cliffs and mountains negotiable, as far as I knew, not even by the sure-footed mountain sheep and goats which we could occasionally see on the cliffs from the valley floor, but never saw in the park itself. ”

“ I had no landing net so I gently slid the almost exhausted fish onto a gravel bar and as I did so I experienced one of those delightful thrills which comes to a fellow’s lot but once or twice in a life-time. But it was not because I had captured three at a strike, for I have done that before and since, but I thrilled because they were not only a new and strange kind of trout, but they were of the color and sheen of newly minted gold. Never before had any man seen such trout. ”

“ I also imagined I detected the noise of padded feet and the scraping noise of claws on the wood. A shudder ran through me. Was a panther, a mountain lion, about to spring [210] upon me? No, I abandoned the thought and instinctively I knew that it must be one of the black wolf pack. Then I remembered hearing the cracking and breaking of sticks or timber while I was trying to sleep in the bedroom, and I felt that Pluto had broken out of the pen and was creeping up on us slowly and stealthily as I have seen a fox creep up on a covey of quail. ”

“ Another man stepped out from the crowd, a very tall, powerful man who would have attracted attention in any garb in any place by his distinguished appearance, who with little ceremony rudely brushed the roughneck to one side, and my instinct told me the handsome stranger could be no other than Big Pete Darlinkel. ”

“ With Big Pete beside me, now that I was thoroughly awake, I would fight all the werwolves of the old world and all the loup-garous of Canada. I reached out and felt for Pete but he was not there, the blankets were empty; once or twice I thought I detected the glint of the wolves’ eyes, but the night was very dark and in the shadow of the roof I could really see nothing.
[4] A werwolf, or loup-garou, is a legendary man who, it was formerly believed, could at will take on the form and nature of a wolf. ”

“ When the buffalo wandered back to their original pasture land I, like a coyote, slunk away and consoled myself with the thought [88] that although I had had my run for my money, at least, I had seen the death of the antelope even if I did miss again seeing the Wild Hunter “collar his game,” as Big Pete would have called the act of securing it. Besides this I had a real exciting adventure with good red-blooded American animals and learned the lesson that large horned beasts which have not been taught to fear man are exceedingly dangerous to man. ”