Patches (Hawkes)/Chapter 8
OLD Ephraim should have stayed in Yellowstone Park where he was well off, but like many humans he became dissatisfied with his lot and sought his fortunes in other regions and so came to grief. In the park he was protected by the government, with plenty of forage on the dumps of the many tourists' hotels, and, if he took a notion, he could kill an elk calf, for elk were very plentiful in the park being protected just as Old Ephraim was. But he failed to appreciate all of his blessings and so came into our story.
Old Ephraim was the facetious name which hunters and frontiersmen in the west had given to the Rocky Mountain grizzly bear. Before the discovery of the great Kodiak bear on Kodiak Island in Alaska it was thought that the Rocky Mountain grizzly was king among carnivorous animals in the western hemisphere, but the discovery of the Kodiak bear took this palm from him.
Old Ephraim at the time of our story was five or six years old and while he was not of record-breaking size yet he was most formidable. Six or seven hundred pounds of bear meat armed with death-dealing paws and prodigious claws are about as much bear as even a brave man would want to see coming after him unless he was heavily armed.
Old Ephraim had come from his hibernation about April first. He had been fat in autumn when he had begun the long winter sleep, but now his coat was dull and lifeless. His flesh had disappeared and his digestive organs were also at a low ebb. So for the first ten days after coming forth from his long winter's sleep he ate little but grasses and roots, leaving his digestive organs to recover their vigor. Then it was that the blood-lust came upon him. Even so he might have satisfied it with an elk calf but that was not to his liking. He remembered the year before having tasted mutton and now a great desire to feed upon that delicacy came over him. So one April morning he left the park and pointed his nose to the southeast and started on his long journey. He was very lucky in his quest for sheep and discovered a small sheep ranch towards the close of the first day. Like a good hunter he waited until after dark and then fell on the flock and killed several sheep and so satisfied his longing for mutton and warm blood. He was not like Two Toes the Terrible, killing merely for the excitement of the chase for Old Ephraim killed to satisfy his appetite.
The following day he found more meat for he discovered a mule deer which had broken a fore-leg in a windfall. She was quite at his mercy and he broke her neck with a terrific left-hand blow from his great paw, for most bears are left handed.
The third day of his peregrinations he found a convenient stream where trout and suckers were very plentiful and he spent the better part of the day fishing. He would crouch upon a flat stone close to the stream and whenever a fish came to the surface to snap up a fly that had fallen upon the water, with one stroke of his great paw he would knock the fish out upon the land and eat it at his leisure.
On the fourth day of his travels he discovered a beetree and had the time of his life driving out the owners of the sweet and possessing himself of the results of many months of toil. He did not mind that he got stung upon his nose and lips for the delicious honey well repaid him for the smart of the bee stings.
The fifth day he crossed the mountains above Crooked Creek ranch and came down into Aspen Draw, a little gulch close to the timber above the upper mesa and Piñon Valley.
Here the following day he killed a yearling heifer and so his presence upon the ranch became known. Larry was the one who discovered the kill as he was doing most of the range riding. He examined the carcass to the best of his ability but he did not have the trained eyes of a woodsman, so failed to note all the signs. One thing he was sure of, it was probably not the work of the wolves for nothing had been seen of the gray pack since the loss of Old Two Toes.
When he conducted his uncle, Hank Brodie, to the spot, this veteran trailer at once pointed out the large track in the soft dirt close to the heifer. It was as large as the palm of a man's hand with the fingers outspread. At the perimeter of the track were five large claw prints.
"What do you make of that, son?" inquired Hank Brodie pointing to the unmistakable sign.
"Whew," returned Larry, "how did I ever overlook that? He must be a whopper whatever he is."
"It is Old Ephraim," his uncle returned. "That is the frontier name for the great Rocky Mountain grizzly. We certainly got an important visitor this time, but we will wait and see what he will do. I don't think he will be as bad as the wolves."
But Old Ephraim was hungry and the Crooked Creek calves and yearlings tasted good to him so he killed a fresh one every day. Finally Hank Brodie had to see what he could do with traps.
So three or four of the cow-punchers set out one day with axes to build a pen trap. They built it on the edge of the timber close to Piñon Valley. It was made of lodge-pole pines about ten inches in diameter. These were notched at the ends and the corners were locked together just as the old time log cabin was built. Poles were put across the top of the pen, when the sides were completed, to make a roof and heavy stones were laid upon them to make the roof secure. Then a log door was built and this was held up by a strong rope which passed over the roof of the house and down the backside and through the wall to the trigger inside. When everything was in readiness the trap was baited with a freshly killed calf's head and the cow-punchers went home to await developments.
For two days Old Ephraim did not seem to discover the pen trap but on the third night he entered it and pulled the trigger and the door went down with a great bang. Judging from the appearance of the house the next day, the mighty grizzly had been infuriated on being entrapped in this way. He had evidently reared to his full height and placing his strong shoulders against the roof had literally lifted the poles and the boulders upon them and thrown them to the ground. He had done a very thorough job in demolishing the pen trap for he had not only stripped off the entire roof but he had also torn out one side of the trap. Evidence of his fury could be seen where he had stripped the bark from the lodge-poles leaving great claw marks, some of them a foot long.
"That old paw would make a man sick if he ever raked it down his back," said Uncle Hank as he pointed to the signs of Old Ephraim's fury.
Hank next tried a deadfall. He secured a log about fifteen feet long and drove down stakes each side of it until he had made a lane with the log in the middle of it. Then one end was raised to the height of perhaps eight feet and held in place by means of a figure four. On the spindle of the figure four was placed a frame of honey which a cow-puncher had ridden twenty miles to secure.
Old Ephraim evidently was suspicious of this deadfall for he did not go very near it for a day or two, but finally the honey became too much for him. Even then he did not venture into the lane under the deadfall but pulled up several stakes at the sides and then thrust his arm in and secured the honey without injury to himself although the deadfall was sprung.
Hank next tried a half dozen of the heavy steel traps that he had used for the wolves. Old Ephraim finally blundered into two of them, but he merely took the log to which they were fastened on his shoulder and carrying it to the nearest tree had beaten the traps against it until they came to pieces. Parts of them were seen strewn on the ground.
This last failure discouraged Hank Brodie and he did not try further to catch the big bear, but tried poison instead. He put arsenic and strychnine into pieces of meat near each kill when it was found, but Old Ephraim's nose could not be deceived and he always let poisoned meat strictly alone.
There is no telling how long the grizzly would have remained on the Crooked Creek ranch had not an unforeseen meeting taken place, one which gave all parties participating considerable surprise.
Larry and Patches had been riding on the upper mesa looking for spring calves and had just ridden into Aspen Draw, when, as they neared a fringe of bushes at the side of the canyon, Patches suddenly snorted and became very excited and pranced about. Larry was much astonished as he had never seen him act like this before but the fear of the horse was immediately explained. For the next instant a mighty grizzly bear reared on his haunches and looked over the tops of the bushes at the horse and rider. He was not over forty feet away and to Larry he looked a veritable mountain. Hank Brodie had cautioned the boy against shooting at the grizzly if he should ever come upon him at close range for he might infuriate him and precipitate trouble.
Larry forgot this warning and instinctively his hand slid to his six gun, and, before he could formulate a plan of escape, he had raised his revolver and fired. The bullet struck the bear a glancing blow upon the shoulder which did no damage, but threw Old Ephraim into a towering rage.
With a roar of pain and fury the old grizzly charged straight at the horse and rider. Now while a grizzly bear is rather slow in a straight away run, in a sudden charge he can often put forth a great burst of speed which almost approaches that of the mountain lion.
And this was what Old Ephraim did. He had been attacked without provocation and he intended that somebody should smart for it. Before Larry had time to tighten the line in his left hand the bear had taken two jumps. Then in the excitement Larry dropped his .45 and clutched the quirt and brought it down on Patches' side. The horse wheeled partly about as though to run and then seemed to change his mind, or perhaps he was rooted to the ground with fear. Anyhow he did not break into the wild gallop Larry had expected. Instead he stood rigidly, his forefeet planted like pile drivers and Larry felt the horse's muscles beneath the saddle grow tense. Patches, looking back over his shoulder, timed his attack just as a baseball player swings his bat to meet the flying ball. So when the great grizzly executed his fourth jump, which would have carried him upon the horse's flank, Patches lashed out with both heels in a terrific kick which hit the bear squarely. One hoof struck the side of his neck, and the other caught him beneath the jaw. Larry heard
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something break, which sounded like breaking wood, and the thought flashed through his mind that Patches had broken his own leg. The recoil from the kick was terrific, and it threw Patches forward upon his knees; while Larry went flying over the horse's head striking on his own head and shoulders on the ground. For two or three seconds he seemed to lose consciousness and a faint sick feeling gripped him and everything was dark. But almost immediately his vitality reasserted itself, and his mind cleared. He raised to a sitting position only to see, not ten feet away, a mighty grizzly also struggling to his feet. He was working his jaw and winking his eyelids. He seemed as dazed as Larry himself and very much bewildered about what had happened.
For a moment Larry was paralyzed with fear, then he remembered his six gun and his hand went to the holster, but it was empty. Just at this moment he noticed that he was kneeling upon something hard and looking down he discovered his revolver half buried in the dirt. Frantically he clutched it and without realizing what the results might be, fired the remaining five shots in quick succession into the great bear. Then seeing that his gun was useless, in a fit of frenzy, he threw the revolver with all his might at the bear's head and ran for his life.
In the New England high school which Larry had attended he had been considered something of a sprinter. He had run one-hundred yards in ten and three-fifths seconds, which is very fast for a high school boy. But he never ran on the track under a watch as he now fled down Aspen Draw. It seemed to him with every jump that the great bear was close upon him and he began zigzagging this way and that thinking by so doing he might escape the mighty paw of his pursuer. Once he imagined he could even feel the hot breath of the great beast upon his back.
By the time he had covered one-hundred yards his breath came in gasps, but he could not stop or slacken his speed. At the end of one hundred and fifty yards his breath was coming in a wheezy whistle. He had to slacken his pace for a second to breathe, so he looked back for his pursuer, but to his surprise there was no bear in sight. He stood for about ten seconds gazing back up the draw, but there was no grizzly on his track. But this did not hinder him making all haste to Patches, who was waiting for him another fifty yards down the draw. With what remaining strength Larry had he climbed into the saddle and putting spurs to the horse he galloped back to the ranch house. Pony was the only cow-puncher that he could find at the ranch house, and he, at first, greeted Larry's story with shouts of derision and laughter. But, finally, seeing how much in earnest the boy was and discovering that Patches had skinned one of his knees he saddled the Jack Rabbit and together they returned to Aspen Draw.
They approached the spot where Larry had last seen Old Ephraim, with drawn revolvers, but this precaution was entirely unnecessary for they found on drawing near that the great bear was lying on the ground motionless where Larry had last seen him.
They took the precaution to throw stones at him before they approached very near, but finally discovered that he was quite lifeless. Careful examination of the grizzly showed that Patches' terrific kick had dislocated his neck and broken his lower jaw, while five of Larry's bullets had taken effect. This was quite enough for one bear so it was no wonder Old Ephraim was dead.
By the light of two lanterns and the May moon they skinned the grizzly and after cutting out twenty pounds of bear steak they took the skin and the steak home and left the remainder for the coyotes.
That evening as they sat about the supper table, Larry told the story in detail. And it was Big Bill who summed up the sentiments of the company.
"That air hoss, Patches," said the big fellow, accenting his remarks with a blow on the table, "is a wonder. He is the all-fired'st hoss I ever heard of. He bagged that old Two Toes when government hunters had been after him for five years. Now he has bagged the grizzly. If that ain't some doings for a hoss."
"That hoss is worth a thousand dollars in gold," put in Pony.
"He is worth more than that," said Larry stoutly. "I wouldn't sell him for all the money in Wyoming."