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(Publisher's note -- This latest serialized story is not actually about
Arizona Rangers, because it takes place in northern Utah in the 1880's.)
The year in which I turned twenty-one, I shot my first grizzly, and buffalo, and man. I rode the wrong way down through the Bitterroots, and when I wasn't rained on, I was snowed on. It seemed like things just had to get better. If not, I would die. In the high spirits of my youth, I felt that I could equal any challenge thrown at me. Since I'm still alive, I guess I made out okay, but I have helped bury a lot of men that didn't. In the 1880's it was how we all lived. You either got tough or died.
I remember it as though it were only yesterday—that first solo trip down through the Rockies.
I was riding a strawberry roan that by all rights should have been a work horse. In the northern sections you couldn't afford to be too fussy about mounts, and there was only that roan and a mule to choose from when I was shopping. I had worked with mules before and found them unpredictable, so I bought the big horse. Where he was so big and ugly, he came a lot cheaper than a mule. He turned out to be the proper choice. With every passing day his value grew, for he was smart as well as big. For days we had traveled through the rain, and when we hit the big mountains we got into snow. I picked the easiest ways through the passes, but even at that the snow was often chest deep. Still, he never faltered. He was strong and mighty enthusiastic, always wanting to see what lay beyond the next bend.
Somewhere past the headwaters of the Salmon River we hit an ancient trail and followed it south. I didn't have any particular destination in mind; I was just rolling along with a vague idea of hunting meat for some mining camp or railroad spur. I hadn't come here to live, and all I owned was on my back or in my saddlebags. It didn't amount to much. Ammunition and an extra knife, a hatchet, the Bible that Ma insisted I take when I left home - these and a couple of Oregon newspapers were all the saddlebags contained.
What else might I need? I loved the stories of the Bible, especially David and Goliath. The newspapers had been read until they were but rags, but they would be new to the next man. A lot of people
use them to roll cigarettes. That was one habit I was lacking. I dearly loved the smell of a pipe, especially around a campfire in the evening, but my mouth had burned when I tried one, and it tasted nothing like it smelled. I made up my mind to leave the pipe smoking to others.
To tell the truth there was no plan. I was just looking for new opportunities. If one came up, I would buy a pack animal and tools and go for it. Until it was known what was needed, I was not buying. The weather made an abrupt shift, and now the sun shone on the scenery to give it added splendor.
The trail we followed was old, maybe older than any of the Indian tribes living here now. It was some kind of nice country. Sometimes I would just stop and sit in the saddle, gazing in awe at the scenery. The beauty of some of those lonesome places was such that a man might live there the rest of his life and never be lonely. A lot of men did, but most of them became what is known in the northern forests as "woods queer," taking to talking to trees and rocks and hiding when another person came along. With that in mind I kept on riding. I didn't believe it could ever happen to me, but probably the others had felt the same at first.
It was March or early April, and most of the game was still at lower elevations. I was going to have to find some pretty soon, for the food sack was getting empty. Beans had been the staple for so many meals that I was not fit company, if you get my drift. I never seemed to tire of them, though, and was always glad to sit down to a meal of baked beans and frying pan bannock. I had also shot three kinds of rabbits on this
trip: cottontail, snowshoe hare, and white-tailed jackrabbit. The trouble with these is that they contain no fat, which a body needs to survive on. They are a good source of meat, however, and are the tastiest critters you can get.
Something more substantial was needed now, and I checked every track in sight of the trail. Most of the tracks were elk tracks, and that was too big an animal to take right now. A lot of men were wasteful with their game in those times, but I was not. The thought of shooting an elk and leaving the bulk of the meat for the wolves did not appeal. I didn't want to camp there until it was eaten up, either, so I kept on looking for a small mule deer or a black bear rising early from his den.
It was another day before contact was made with humans, and that was in the form of a string of rifle shots. It sounded like two different guns blazing away. It took two hours to come up on the spot where the shots had come from. Actually, to sneak up, for I was not about to ride hell-bent into unknown gunfire. There were a lot of salty characters out in these parts, and an unnecessary gunfight was not high on the agenda.
Carefully circling around the spot, I found that two men had ridden up to the high end of a meadow, blazed away at something, and ridden back without checking the results of their shooting. It seemed like a mighty callous thing to do, unless the target was a rock or a stump. From the rapidity of the shots and the expense of ammunition it was doubtful that was the case.
Coming down into the meadow, the first thing seen was a yearling deer. At least this one was dead. Tracks of another one were showing blood and heading in the direction of a small copse of fir trees. I tied a rope to the deer at hand and let the roan drag it to a nearby boulder-ridden slope. I wasn't about to be caught bent over dressing out a deer in the middle of that meadow.
When that chore was finished, I hugged the cover and went down to where the wounded deer's tracks entered the trees. The two rear tracks were being laid down side by side, so the deer was paunch hit. In a hundred yards I spotted it laying on the downside of a log, and with my Colt I shot it at the base of the neck as it started to rise.
I waited at the edge of the trees for a good half hour to see if the other men had heard the shot and might return. When no sign of them was seen, I figured that the trees had muffled the sound. I didn't know for sure if these guys were trouble, but anyone who shoot game and let it lay was surely never going to be a friend of mine.
I went back and dressed out the second deer, a much more unpleasant job than the first, and hung it from a limb out of reach of predators. The first deer was loaded behind the saddle and toted to a likely camping spot. It looked like mining country, and maybe I could get hired to hunt for a big operation.
Talk about a windy area! It seemed like no matter which way the bedroll pointed the wind would shift around into the face. I took to looking for nests of boulders and fallen trees—anything to cut the wind from at least a couple of sides. It was pretty country though, and there never did come a time I was sorry that I had come. Little did I realize that eventually this very region would be called home. That would be in the future. I still thought I was just passing through.
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