Grizzly Killer: The Making of a Mountain Man Read online

  We went into several small parks that I had hunted with good success last fall but failed to see a thing. I was learnin’ right fast the deer and elk didn’t use the same areas in the spring as they did in the fall. I was headed in a west by north direction and came up over a small ridge and found a well-used game trail with both deer and elk tracks on it. I followed it for maybe another mile and came into a very protected little valley with maybe forty or fifty cow elk grazin’ in it. I was still up in the trees, and the wind was in my face, so I got off Red and just let the reins drop to the ground. Red knew by now to stand where I left him when I let the reins just hang down. Jimbo was starin’ real hard at the elk with every muscle ridged, and his tail was quiverin’, but he never moved or made a sound.

  It was gettin’ to be late mornin’ by now, and I figured those elk would be comin’ back up in the trees to bed down for the afternoon in not too much longer, so I found us a spot ’bout forty yards off the trail in a little thicket of brush, and Jimbo and I just sat and waited. Maybe a half hour later, those elk started to move, but instead of followin’ the trail up to where I was, they went the other way. It wasn’t long ’fore they were all out of sight. There were a lot of mighty fat cows in that herd, and I figured it was ’cause they would be droppin’ calves ’fore long. I figured I couldn’t get around downwind of ’em before they smelled or heard me, so I just sat there and waited awhile. It was a right pleasant spring day. There were birds singin’, some blue jays were squawkin’ in the pines behind us, and a pair of hawks was circlin’ in the sky overhead. There was just a slight breeze whisperin’ through the pines, and the wildflowers were comin’ up in the meadows where the sun had been hittin’ each day.

  I didn’t know if I could make Jimbo circle around behind those elk and head them up this trail to me, but I figured it was worth a try. He knew what I meant when I would send him right or left and to stay with hand signals, and he knew the signal for him to go get Ol’ Red, but I had never tried to teach him to circle animals before and herd them to me. I sat there, ponderin’ on how to do this, and patted him on the head. He sat right up, watchin’ me, and it was plain he wanted to go after them. Once the elk entered the trees on the other side of the clearin’, I couldn’t see where they had gone. I figured they wouldn’t go far into the trees before they would bed down. But how I would get Jimbo to know how far to go to get to the other side of ’em before he jumped ’em was the question. I knew he would follow my hand signals, but he wouldn’t be able to see me when he got to the other side and in the trees. He was payin’ right close attention to me, and I made the signal for him to go left by pointin’ left, then by pushin’ my hand away from me, I was tellin’ him to go farther away from me, then I made the sign to bring Red back to me. By now I figured he was goin’ to be mighty confused, but I’d done it all a second time and a third. Then just pointin’ left again, I whispered go.

  He started off to the left slow and quiet, and when he was just ’bout out of sight, he looked back at me, and I signed to him to keep goin’ farther by pushin’ my hand away from my body again and again. He responded and was soon completely out of sight. I sat there and waited, not havin’ any idea ’bout what was gonna happen. I moved a little closer and was sittin’ by a big ol’ pine maybe twenty yards above the trail we followed in here. I checked the prime in my pan and got in a good shootin’ position. Right then I heard a loud crack of a branch and the thunder of hooves. Then there were elk runnin’ out of the trees on the other side of clearin’. They were goin’ in just ’bout every direction. They were runnin’ through the meadow, runnin’ through the trees, goin’ right and left and straight ahead. I could now see Jimbo comin’ out behind them. He had a cow and yearlin’ calf right in front of him, and he was tryin’ to herd them right to me. I was payin’ right close attention to them, thinkin’ that yearlin’ was just what I was lookin’ for, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Not ten yards to my left, there were two cows followed by a yearlin’ bull runnin’ full speed up the trail. By the time I got the Hawken up to my shoulder, the first cow had passed and the second was right in front of me. I let her pass and fired just as the yearlin’ had takin’ her place. That yearlin’ ran ’bout fifty more yards and fell. I stood up and could see Jimbo still tryin’ to herd those other two elk, but they were gettin’ farther away. We both found out herdin’ elk wasn’t like herdin’ Ol’ Red.

  While I was dressin’ him out, Jimbo came back, and I rubbed his ears and told him he was a good boy. Then I cut off a good chunk of the liver for him. When I got finished, I put the rest of the liver and heart in the saddlebags, and we headed back to camp to get the horses to carry this elk out.

  When I entered camp, Runnin’ Wolf was workin’ there by the fire pit. He had that bow stripped down to the wood. He had the hair scraped off the hide and had been to the stream and soaked the raw hide and had it cut into strips. He was learnin’ to get around pretty good with that crutch. As I rode up, he smiled, and I got down and told him the story of how Jimbo had scared the elk and how the three had run right past me. We had a good laugh at Jimbo as I told Runnin’ Wolf of him tryin’ to herd those elk. I set the liver and heart on a tall stump I was usin’ as a table, put the pack saddles on the horses, and headed back to get the elk.

  It took ’bout an hour to get back to the elk, and we were movin’ right along. I figured it to be six or seven miles. There was a pair of coyotes that was eatin’ on the gut pile when we rode up, but they scattered mighty quick like. It didn’t take long to get the hide off this yearlin’ and then strip the meat. This time of year, the elk had started to shed his long winter hair, so I figured the hide would make good leather but not much of a robe, so I cut it in half and lined the packs with it to carry the meat so the blood wouldn’t soak into the canvas of the panniers. Once I got all the useable meat packed and Jimbo had ate his fill of the scraps, we headed back to the dugout.

  Just as we topped the first rise, a black bear stood up in the trail, maybe seventy-five yards in front of us. Jimbo had been distracted from findin’ that bear first as he was draggin’ the bone of a whole elk haunch with him and was bringin’ up the rear. That bear had smelled the dead elk and was headed right down the trail to his carcass. Since we didn’t need more meat right now, I took Red and led the horses off the trail a couple of hundred yards, and Jimbo, although he was followin’ along with us, was growlin’ and makin’ sure that bear knew there would be a fight if he came any closer. We just circled way out around him while he stood in the trail, watchin’ us. But when we got past him, he dropped down and continued on his way down to what we had left of the elk carcass.

  We were back in camp in a little over an hour, and I figured it was midafternoon. Runnin’ Wolf had that Snake’s bow all rewrapped with rawhide strips and had braided the rawhide just above and below the handle. He had it settin’ by a small fire, dryin’, and he grinned and said “Now can be used by Ute.” He then grinned and said, “Snake’s bow not good for Ute.”

  I hung the elk meat in the smokehouse and walked up the stream, gatherin’ dead limbs from the currents and chokecherries to use for smokin’ that meat. Last fall, me and Pa had used some cottonwood to smoke meat, but we found the flavor was much better usin’ the wood from the berry bushes. I built a small fire in the fire pit in the bottom of the smokehouse and closed it up, goin’ back every couple of hours to add a few more of the branches. The jerky strips would be done in a day or two, but the roasts might take a week.

  After Runnin’ Wolf had finished his bow, he said it would take a few days to dry and harden. Then he took his crutch and started up the trail along the stream. He was gone long enough I was wonderin’ if I should go see if he needed some help, when I heard his laugh and here he came almost runnin’ down the trail right into camp. He found a match to his crutch stick, and with one under each arm and holdin’ his broken leg up, he was comin’ down that trail faster than I could walk and was laughin’, havin’ fun doin’
it. He almost fell when he came to a stop by the fire, and we both had a good laugh. It felt good to laugh again, and Jimbo came up to see what was goin’ on. He was waggin’ his tail and tiltin’ his big ol’ head to the side, tryin’ to figure us out. Then we started laughin’ at him. It felt so good just to laugh. We laughed at everything till my sides were hurtin’, and I had to make myself stop. It felt mighty good to have a friend again, a friend to talk to and laugh with. I still missed Pa a lot, but that low-down, miserable feelin’ that would come over me was comin’ less and less. I knew it wasn’t ’cause I missed him less, just that I had so much to take up my thoughts these days.

  Over the next couple of weeks, Runnin’ Wolf’s leg was gettin’ stronger and healin’ fast. Every few days I would take the splint off and check his leg. The color was almost back to normal, and as he used the crutch sticks, he was puttin’ more weight on his leg each day. Around the third week of May, he was back to usin’ just one crutch and would ride the chestnut to take Ol’ Red and the horses out to the meadow to graze each day. He spent time every day makin’ arrows from the good, straight willow limbs from along the stream and then practiced with that bow. He was mighty good and unbelievably fast with the bow and arrows. I had him practice every day as well with the squirrel gun, and he was gettin’ much better with it, but he still preferred the bow.

  I was spendin’ my days gettin’ ready to leave for Rendezvous. I had dug up me and Pa’s cash, and Runnin’ Wolf seemed amazed at the number of plews I had. I double-checked all the packs and made repairs where needed, braided new rawhide lead ropes, cleaned and checked all the horses’ hooves, and filed them down where needed. I came to believe we needed one more pack horse for all the plews and big pile of furs we had. Two pack horses just couldn’t carry it all. Runnin’ Wolf said, “Make travois like moving a village until we find more horses. I will go to Rendezvous with my friend.”

  Next day I cut enough narrow lodge pole pines to lash together two travois, and by what I figured was ’bout the first of June, we left the dugout and headed west by north to hit the Bear River and follow it up all the way to Willow Valley. Runnin’ Wolf said he had never been there, but from what he had heard, it should take us ’bout six to eight days to get there.

  10 Warm Springs

  As we traveled northwest and dropped out of the foothills of the still-snowcapped Bear River Mountains, we traveled over hill after hill covered with sage and across countless miles of tablelands of nothin’ but sage. The antelope were everywhere, and on the second day out, Runnin’ Wolf showed me how to lure them into range by hidin’ in the sage and settin’ up a little flag on a stick just above the sage, and those little prairie goats just came right in, tryin’ to figure out what that flag was. I didn’t like antelope as much as deer and elk, but the fresh meat still tasted mighty good.

  The size of this western country was beyond discribin’. You could see for a hundred miles or more, and it was all the same. There was mountain range after mountain range with miles and miles and mores miles of empty land in between. The sky was so big it almost hurt the eyes to stare at it, and the mountains so high the clouds even have a hard time gettin’ over them. The wildflowers were now really comin’ out. There were Injun paintbrush, yellow daises, bluebells, and many more. I had no idea what they were. And they were growin’ right out around the sage. Along the creek bottoms, the grass was a foot high already, and we saw game every day.

  Pullin’ those two travois made for slow goin’, as we would have to find a way around most rough spots. I figured it would take us a couple of extra days to get to Willow Valley. But we hit the Bear on the third day and just followed it along, goin’ north, stayin’ up on the benchland on the east side of the river. We found a nice, wide trail goin’ down to the river a couple of hours ’fore dark and made a camp in a grove of cottonwoods not far from the river. The river was runnin’ mighty high and was makin’ quite a roar with all the snow meltin’ mighty fast up in the high country. I didn’t like not bein’ able to hear good over the roar of the water, but there was no shelter, and we figured the fire and smoke could be seen for a long ways off if we were just out in the sage, and the only trees were right along the river.

  Runnin’ Wolf was walkin’ now without the crutches but still favorin’ that leg a lot. I figured it would take several more weeks before he was all healed up. But it had only been five or six weeks since I had set that leg, and with him bein’ young and strong, it was healin’ mighty fast. He would take off the splint at night and rub the leg and sleep with it off, but he would wrap it good and put the splint back on each mornin’ before he would walk on it.

  By the time we had the stock watered and hobbled to graze on the grass along the river, Jimbo came into camp with the largest rabbit I had ever seen. It was double the size of the big black-eared jackrabbits that we jumped so often out in the sage. He just dropped it and went out again. It wasn’t long ’fore he brought in another one. Before dark, he had brought in three of these big rabbits. They reminded me of the snowshoe hares, and I figured they must be a hare of some kind. Runnin’ Wolf just called them big doovapooch. He said their fur made warm clothes for the winter. I skinned, cleaned, and put two of them on a spit over the fire and gave the third one back to Jimbo, along with a whole bunch of ear rubbin’ and a little roughhousin’ that he seemed to like so much. We had very little coffee left, maybe enough for another day, and no flour or sugar. I sure hoped we didn’t have any trouble gettin’ on into Rendezvous and they would have plenty of supplies.

  When those rabbits were done, we sipped on hot, bitter coffee and ate roasted rabbit that tasted mighty good, but I sure had been missin’ my biscuits. As we sat around the small fire that we had made sheltered in this thick grove of cottonwoods, Runnin’ Wolf started to tell me ’bout his people and village. He told me ’bout his sister Shinin’ Star, whom he had to provide for, and how she had lost her man on a hunt for cooch, what the white man calls buffalo, last fall, just a few months after they were together. He said she was the prettiest girl in the whole village, and her man had been his friend. He talked of how his father had been killed in a raid on the Arapaho a couple of summers ago, and his mother, after much mournin’, had taken another man from the White River band and had moved away, and he talked of how he and his sister had stayed. He said he wanted to take me, whom he owed his life to, to his village and how I would be an honored guest. He told me that when we met, he had been on his way back to his village from the Yambow, a valley to the west. He had gone there to visit friends and relatives in another village and to see a girl, but she was not there as she had gone with her family to visit relatives in Timpanogos valley. He had stayed there just a few days, visitin’ some relatives, and had decided to go back to his village along the northern route, when he came upon that Snake huntin’ party on the Bear River.

  He continued telling me more of the trappers from General Ashley’s brigade that he spent those many moons with and how they had taught him their tongue, how they had paid him by givin’ him his knife and a cookin’ pot that he gave to his sister and lots of beads and copper rings that they called foofarraw and said, “If I gave them to the girls, they would all like me.” He said he gave most of them to Shinin’ Star but had kept some of them for Pale Moon, the girl he had gone to see, but when the Snakes had killed his horse, he had lost everything includin’ the rest of the foofarraw.

  I went out and brought in Ol’ Red and the horses and put them on a picket line right close to camp. With Jimbo and Red bein’ right with us, I figured we were safe without standin’ guard all night.

  Next mornin’ after eatin’ leftover rabbit and just drinkin’ water, I figured we had ’bout enough coffee for one more pot and I would save that for supper. We loaded the travois and started north again. ’Bout midday I was lookin’ around for a place to rest the stock for a bit and came upon a spring that smelled a little of brimstone and had just a bit of steam comin’ off the surface. There was good grass
goin’ out a ways from the water, and I figured the stock could rest and graze an hour or so. When I got down to taste the water, it was almost hot to the touch. Now I hadn’t had a real bath since last summer, and then it was in a mighty cold mountain stream, and when I turned around to tell Runnin’ Wolf I was fixin’ to take a bath, he was already strippin’ out of his buckskins.

  We spent the next couple of hours soakin’ and scubbin’ in that warm water. It took a bit to get used to the heat, but after a few minutes, it was right down relaxin’. I tried to get Jimbo to get in, but he wanted no part of that hot water. My hair hadn’t been trimmed for many months, and it took a lot of scrubbin’ to get it feelin’ clean again.

  My skin was so white it started to burn from the sun, so I figured it was time to move on. Just then, Jimbo growled and took off. Me and Runnin’ Wolf both jumped out of the water, naked as jaybirds, and I picked up my Hawken, and he, his bow. Just then I heard three shots go off, and someone yelled in accented English, “OK to come in!” I wasn’t goin’ to put down my Hawken to get dressed, and Runnin’ Wolf just slipped behind the chestnut with arrow ready and stood still. I answered, “Come in if’n you’re friendly.”

  As they came on in, I could see there were more than just the three of them, and I wasn’t at all ready to put down the Hawken. Then I could see the others with them were three Injun squaws, and those squaws were each leadin’ three pack horses. I was standin’ there naked with the Hawken, and one of the men just started laughin’, then the others joined in, and it was catchin’, ’cause I started to laugh, and I glanced over at Runnin’ Wolf, but he was lookin’ at me like I was crazy. What he didn’t know was by them shootin’ off their guns, they was tellin’ me they was unarmed and friendly. I set the Hawken down in easy reach and put on my buckskins as they rode on in. I couldn’t see Jimbo, and Runnin’ Wolf was lookin’ real worried and not ready to put down his bow.