The Deer Stalker Read online

  He had traveled leisurely, leading his pack-animal and taking pains to note everything possible in reference to the deer. He estimated that he must have passed more than five thousand of them, most of which were on the west side of the mountain, near the heads of ravines which ran down into the canyon. There was little grazing left for sheep and cattle, let alone deer. In another month, when the eastern committee of naturalists would arrive to study the condition of the deer and the preserve, there would be no grazing left, thanks to the unprecedented dry season. And it had followed years of comparatively little snow and rain.

  Eburne’s visit to Kanab had been productive of both gratification and dismay. He found the forest service officials there, most of whom were favorably disposed to McKay’s proposition to drive ten thousand deer across the canyon. They spoke of it as preposterous, yet undoubtedly were intrigued by the originality, the audacity of the idea. McKay was to be assured that it would receive careful consideration, with chances greatly in favor of its acceptance. Opposed to this was the no longer disputed fact that on the west side of the preserve there would be an open hunting season. Thad learned nothing about Dyott and Settlemire, but he did not push his casual questioning to the point of betraying what he knew. In fact, he believed he had more information than anyone in Kanab; however, the reticence and taciturnity of the Mormons was in no wise reassuring. What they knew they kept to themselves. Finally, Thad had been relieved to meet with no more open hostility from Cassell, or from anyone except Judson. Still, Cassell had appeared to be a much preoccupied official; he did not listen intently to Thad’s detailed account of the deer-trapping and put the whole matter off until October.

  Early next morning, Thad left his camp and rode over the rim on the Saddle trail that led down into the canyon to the river. He had never been at McKay’s mining claim but had no doubt he could find it.

  This trail down to the river was one of the wildest and most unfrequented along the whole two hundred miles of the canyon. Thad always walked and led his horse over bad places. He was glad to see clear and comparatively fresh tracks in the dust. No doubt McKay had made them recently.

  The grandeur and solitude of the canyon were never lost on Eburne. He gathered the harvest of a faithful and ever-revering eye. The glory of the morning sun had just burst over the endless barren corrugated reaches of the Painted Desert. Away to the east, below the towering rampart of the Vermillion Cliffs, the canyon split the red walls and wound out upon the vast heave and bulge of the desert. It was a zigzag black line, exposed only here and there, strange even to a familiar gaze, and something beyond comprehension to a spectator who did not know what it was. But that line was the Grand Canyon. There, beyond Saddle Mountain, the mouth of the canyon of the Little Colorado came in, with its mile-high walls, and, far to the west, the great blue gaps below Grand View smoked in their slumbering shadows.

  Thad walked and rode until he saw the vast fanlike and illusive shapes of the Mancoweeps lying beneath him. They were as strange as their name. Farther on and below him gleamed the Toyweeps, and below them the river wound, sand-bordered and rock-constricted. A solemn roar soared upward from the river. Often Eburne stopped to rest and listen and look. He never wearied of any canyon scene. He never felt alone. Years along the canyon rims had bred in him something of the Indian’s spirit.

  Some hours later, hot and dusty, Thad turned a corner in the wall at the bottom of the canyon and encountered the object of his search.

  “Howdy, Mac,” he called.

  “Eburne! Wal, I’m a monkey’s uncle!” shouted McKay, dropping his pick. “By gosh, I’d most give up seein’ you.”

  He was a huge stalwart man, heavy of shoulder, body, and leg. His face was broad, dark, full of the deep wrinkles of toil and pain and years. McKay was sixty, yet not a gray hair showed on his tousled head. He had deep-set black eyes, honest and bold, a nose like a Roman warrior, a determined full-lipped mouth, tobacco-stained and chapped by exposure, and a great square chin, craggy and hard as one of the rim promontories. His garb of blue jeans was ragged and earth-stained.

  Eburne lost no time blurting out his good news. Mac’s seamed face changed into a mass of lines, working, twisting, somehow expressing great gratification and joy.

  “You don’t say! Wal, aint thet jest too blamed good?” he exploded. “I was afeared they wouldn’t even listen.”

  “I think it’ll go over,” replied Thad, “and here’s why.” Then he proceeded to tell about the failure to trap deer, the fact of the coming investigation, the drought and the growing scarcity of feed, and lastly, the probable antagonism of the State to the federal service, which were almost sure to result in an acceptance of McKay’s proposition.

  “They’ll have a row,” concluded Thad.

  “Nothin’ shorer in the world. But I believe the governor will be on my side. He’ll shore be agin’ the shootin’ of deer. Mebbe I kin get the State game warden to back me up.”

  “You don’t need them, and perhaps it’d be better if they’d openly oppose the drive, as we know they will the shooting.”

  “Wal, then, I’ll go slow about askin’ them.”

  “Mac, before you tell me your plan of the drive, I want to know how you’re going to raise the money.”

  “I’ll be hanged if I know,” declared McKay, scratching his unkempt head. “Thet’s been worryin’ me some.”

  “It’s the most important factor,” declared Thad emphatically. “It’s going to cost a lot of money.”

  “Now, I hadn’t figgered it’d cost anythin’ like what I’d make out of it. Fact is I was figgerin’ on payin’ the expense out of the earnin’s.”

  “You can’t do that. You’ll need some ready cash, anyhow,” protested Eburne, realizing at once the man’s simplicity and lack of organizing capacity.

  “Wal, I can raise some.”

  “How much?”

  “Mebbe five hundred dollars.”

  “All right. I’ll lend you a thousand. Then if you can raise some more by borrowing from people in Flag…. Say, Mac, there ought to be some moving picture outfit willing to pay something in advance. Because if you drive the deer it will make a grand picture.”

  “By gosh, Thad, I hadn’t figgered on you lendin’ me money, or raisin’ any more thet way. It’s mighty white of you. An’ thet hunch just about settles the difficulty.”

  “No. It only helps. If you get a start you stand a chance of finishing. But you’ve got to start. That means money for outfit, supplies, for transportation, and all that sort of thing. Fifteen hundred dollars isn’t enough.”

  “Wal, if it ain’t, I’ll get more,” returned McKay offhand. His mind would not concentrate on figures, or evidently on small enterprises. He had always been mixed up in some large deal, more or less visionary, as his late boring for oil out in Utah, or his present delving for copper and gold here in the bottom of the Grand Canyon testified. Still, it was McKay’s kind of imagination and enthusiasm that carried great projects to successful conclusion. McKay would hit the nail on the head sometime—find the treasure at the foot of the rainbow!

  “Mac, just how do you plan to make this deer drive?” asked Eburne thoughtfully. “Jim Evers told me what you told him, but now, since I’ve ridden down that Saddle trail, somehow I’m not so sure.”

  “Simple as a, b, c,” declared McKay, plumping his huge knee down on the sand. His large calloused fingers picked up a fragment of stone. “Now, you look ahere.” And he began to make marks on the smooth sand. “Here’s the cedar slopes all along the east side of Buckskin, clear from the Cocks Combs along by Warm Springs to the Saddle. All the deer on the east side of the mountain go down when the first snow flies to winter on them sage an’ cedar slopes. There’s juniper an’ buckbrush, which’s what the deer will browse on this winter. Or starve! Wal, I’m gamblin’ thet a big outfit of Indians on foot, ringin’ cowbells, an’ a lot of riders on each end of the Indian line can drive an’ herd thousands of deer along them cedar slopes to the ri
m wall under the Saddle. There’s one place I’ll have to fence with wire.”

  McKay desisted in his talk and map-drawing long enough to bite off an enormous quid of tobacco, after which he resumed as volubly as before.

  “I aim to drive the deer into thet big gap leadin’ up to the Saddle. There they’ll hit the trail down into the canyon. They can’t go up, an’ if they pile off the trail it’ll only be down in the gulch. Thet leads into one canyon after another, all walled an’ steep, an’ they go clear to the river. Once through the gap, them deer have got to go down. We can fence breaks along the inside of the trail. Some wire with burlap or cheesecloth stickin’ on it will turn deer back. Now, by fencin’ a place at the river, we could head the deer right into the water. They’ll swim across, hit Tanner’s trail, which is the only place a rabbit could climb out, an’ they’ll go up on the big blue limestone bench.—Why, Thad, it’s a cinch.”

  Eburne was won over, even against his better judgment. It was easy to take stock in something he wished for with all his heart. This idea was so incomparably better than that of shooting or trapping the deer.

  “Mac, you’ve sold me on your drive,” he declared. “Put it up that way to anyone who wants to save the deer and they’ll fall for it too. My advice is for you to go to Flag at once and begin your preparations.”

  “But, Thad, there’s no need rustlin’. I’ve work to finish up here, an’ we can’t start the drive till the snow flies,” protested McKay.

  “But, man, you can get ready,” returned Eburne vehemently. “Don’t you see the absolute necessity of that?”

  “Reckon I don’t, with all due respect to you,” replied McKay bluntly.

  “There are many reasons,” went on Thad, striving to maintain his patience. “You must begin to raise money while getting your drive approved by the service. You might lose because of lack of preparation or by putting the drive off until winter sets in. November would be ideal, if snow came. But usually snow doesn’t come to stay before early December. That’s pretty late, unless you’re ready to drive when the first snow sends the deer down. You’d be taking fearful chances to begin after that.”

  “Aw, the weather keeps good on them cedar slopes till Christmas,” declared McKay. “No, Thad, nothin’ is goin’ to fuss me ’cept thet order from the forest supervisors. Gimme thet an’ the deer’s as good as drove.”

  “Mac, I told you it was pretty sure. I know these men. There’s only one thing likely to kill it.”

  “An’ what’s thet?”

  “Jealousy. The fact that the plan did not originate in the minds of the supervisors.”

  “Ahuh! I get you. An’ thet’s a stumper. Howsomever, if the service people really want to save the deer, my idee will stick in their craws.”

  “Yes, I’m banking on that myself. I know personally how proud all the forest service are of the deer herd. I’m bound to confess it.”

  “Wal, I’ve a hunch they’ll be so tickled with my drive thet they’ll have me make one every year. An’ I’ll clean up some big money, beside doin’ the country good…. When’ll I see you again, Thad?”

  “Not soon, unless you come up to Big Spruce. I’ll be there alone for a few weeks. Then I’ll be one of the guides with the deer investigating committee. After that I’ll probably go across the canyon to Bright Angel. When the shooting season opens I’ll be back riding the forest. That is going to be some job. Last, when the snow flies I hope to be with you on the big drive.”

  “Mebbe I’ll ride up to see you when I’m through here. It wouldn’t be a bad idee for me to have another look at the trail. Every time I go over it I change my mind. Funny! But them Mancoweeps are sure the foolinest places in this here canyon…. Thad, I near forgot to tell you I seen a lot of fresh hoss tracks round the lower slope of Toyweeps. Shod hosses, too. I hadn’t time to trail them far. Lost them anyhow. But I figgered it was queer an’ might have somethin’ to do with Bing Dyott ridin’ Buckskin again.”

  “Mac, what do you make of him?”

  “I don’t make nothin’ of Dyott. I know him. Twenty years ago I knowed him. Bing hasn’t changed none. But times have. When I was drillin’ for oil up in Utah, he was pullin’ off some two-bit rustler deals. They don’t pay, an’ he can’t risk the old-time stuff. Now I figger this way. Dyott’s bein’ on Buckskin this summer has got somethin’ to do with your deer herd. What else is there on the mountain? No wild hosses. An’ he sure wouldn’t do real work, such as this here diggin’.”

  “I agree with you,” replied Thad soberly. “But what is his game?”

  “Wal, have you any idee he means good by the deer herd?” queried McKay with something of sarcasm.

  “Good? No, I haven’t. But neither can I see Dyott and his gang constituting any evil. That is, to an appreciable extent. He’ll kill deer for meat. Maybe he’s so hard up that he’ll try to make a little stake this fall by killing and selling deer. I did have another suspicion, which concerned Dyott’s possible relation to certain cattle interests. But I hesitate to—”

  “Wal, thet’s a pretty good idee,” interrupted McKay. “Hesitatin’ is good sense. I’ve knowed the cattle business in this country for over forty years. No easterner can ever savvy it.”

  Eburne reflected upon the peculiar import in this old Arizonian’s speech. Manifestly his point of view, whatever it was, differed markedly from his own or that of Jim Evers or Blakener. Cattle and sheep meant little or nothing to newcomers to Arizona. But the old stock—how the very fiber of their lives seemed woven in with brands and wool and the long-established customs of early days!

  Eburne left his friend early and addressed himself industriously to the long ascent, well satisfied with his visit on all scores except that allusion of McKay’s to Bing Dyott. It was open to much interpretation. As far as the ex-rustler was concerned, the plot thickened.

  Sunset found Thad back in camp, wholesomely tired and glad his outside tasks were, for the present, done. He would leisurely travel back to V. T. Park to see Blakener and get fresh supplies, then go to his summer camp at Big Spruce Spring, there to await the coming of the appointed committee. He would be glad for a rest and freedom from the perplexing problems and strifes which, after all, had so little to do with his real purpose there in the forest. These were outside duties that had been imposed upon him and had little to do with the warm, intimate kinship he felt for the woods and its wild denizens.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PATRICIA and Sue had a late dinner, owing to a delay in getting back to the El Tovar.

  “I promised our duffel bags for tonight,’’ said Patricia. “Tine is to call for them. It appears Nels and the cook are to leave with pack-animals at daybreak. We’re to follow with Tine and catch up with them on the trail.”

  They found the guide waiting for them in the lobby. “Like to have your bags,” he requested, after greeting them.

  “Mine’s all ready, Tine,” replied Sue.

  “I can finish packing in a few minutes,” added Patricia.

  “Then I’ll take Sue’s along with me an’ come back to fetch yours,” returned the guide.

  Patricia noted with dismay the small size and light weight of Sue’s bag. “Oh, I am a tenderfoot,” she exclaimed, pointing to a large bag she had packed and a small one not quite ready. “I didn’t know what to take and what to leave out.”

  “Shore that’s all right. Pack what you want,” reassured Sue smilingly. “I’d have brought more things, only I didn’t own any more.”

  “You relieve me, Sue. I always was a great person to carry so much more than I needed. I’ll be glad to share with you.”

  “I wonder why I’m such a lucky girl?” queried Sue, gravely gazing up at her new friend.

  “How are you lucky?”

  “To meet you and go with you.”

  “If you call that lucky and want to know why, I can surely enlighten you.”

  “I shore want to know.”

  “It’s because you’re frank and lovable,”
replied Patricia, pausing in her work. “Indeed, I’ve come to sympathize greatly with Nels Stackhouse. I think I know what ails him.”

  Sue blushed scarlet and actually covered her face with her hands. “Oh, I—you—you spoiled such a sweet compliment,” she exclaimed in confusion.

  “Sue, I took the trouble to make inquiries about Nelson, just to satisfy myself,” said Patricia seriously. “He has a fine record here. Straight, sober, industrious, gentlemanly, they say. He is very well liked. Now, whatever he has been in the past, this change ought to weigh with you. It’s what a man is that counts. I believe I’d rather have a man that had once been bad and turned over a new leaf than one who’d always been good.”

  “But don’t you see—it—it only makes me—him—oh, everything all the worse?” burst out Sue, almost piteously. Tears were on the verge of welling up in her eyes.

  “No, Sue, I don’t see,” returned Patricia gravely.

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Tine had come for the rest of the baggage.

  “Miss Clay, I near forgot somethin’,” he announced. “Nels wants to know if he’s to pack two bed rolls.”

  “What are they?” inquired Patricia dubiously.

  “A bed roll is a bunch of blankets rolled up in a tarp,” replied Tine with droll dry gravity. “An’ a tarp is a big piece of heavy canvas. Both together they make a bed. An’ a bed is somethin’—”

  “Thank you, Tine,” interrupted Patricia. “I hope your idea of a tenderfoot isn’t something as elemental….You said Nels wanted to know if he is to pack two of these bed rolls. I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Cowboys and packers always travel as light as possible,” explained Sue. “What Nels means is, will one bed be enough for you and me.”

  “Oh! … What do you think?”

  “Shore it would—for me. I’m used to sleeping double. It’s great fun when you’re camping. But you must consider your own comfort.”

  “I should think you’d be a comfort,” responded Patricia, “especially out in the dark, lonely woods where there are wild beasts and creeping things.—Tine, you’re to pack only one bed roll for us.”