Centennial (15 page)

When the rutting season began, he became a violent creature, slashing at any animal that came his way. And then, one day when Rufous had singled out a cow for himself, he watched with meticulous care for the right moment to assault him, but while he was making preparatory steps, another young bull stepped forward and boldly challenged the old champion. There was the initial confrontation, the stare, the refusal to back down, the digging in of the hind feet, the colossal charge and the shattering jolt as foreheads crashed.

It was a major fight, a real test of the older bull’s power, and he met it with distinction, holding his ground and slowly driving the young challenger back. But when he had humbled the younger bull and given the triumphant bellow of the victor, he found that he was not exactly victorious, for while the two had been fighting, the half-lame bull had skirted off with the cow and was now breeding her in the lush area between the two pillars.

For the rest of that year Rufous and the young bull were enemies. They did not engage in actual battle, for the younger bull sensed that Rufous was so enraged that victory was impossible. In his canny way he bided his time, and when the great herd assembled that autumn he stayed clear of Rufous.

When the time again came for cows to come into heat, the young bull was at the height of his powers, a handsome creature with heavily matted hair and long beard. His forequarters were immense and more than compensated for the inadequate left rear leg. Insolently he muscled his way through the younger bulls, always keeping his eye on Rufous.

It happened with startling suddenness. On the first day of the rutting season he challenged Rufous over the first cow. The two great animals stood glaring at each other for almost a minute and Rufous squared for the initial shock, but when it came he was unprepared for its ferocity. For the first time he backed a little to find a better footing. The second clash was as violent as the first, and again he adjusted his rear feet, but before they found a footing, the younger bull made a feint, followed by a devastating thrust to the other side, and Rufous felt his flank being laid open by a scimitar horn.

For the first time in these fights Rufous was actually hurt, with violent pain coursing through his body. With unprecedented fury he turned upon his assailant and drove at him with such terrible force that he cracked two of the other bull’s ribs.

Ordinarily this would have been sufficient to drive a challenger from the field, but the jet-black bull was no ordinary bison. He was an animal trained in adversity and one that would not surrender until death itself intruded. Twisting his side so as to accommodate the pain of the broken ribs, he drove directly at Rufous, staggering him with blows to the chest and flank. Here was no stylized dueling; here was a fired-up young bull trying his best to kill.

Relentlessly he gored and smashed at Rufous, never allowing the older bull a chance to pull himself together. With a mixture of astonishment and panic Rufous sensed that he was not going to defeat this explosive young adversary. Vaguely he acknowledged that a better animal than he had come onto the scene, and with an apprehension of tragedy and lonely years ahead, he began to back away. First one foot moved, grudgingly, then another. He was in retreat.

With a snort of triumph the younger bull charged at him for the last time, knocking him sideways and into confusion. Lowering both his tail and his head, Rufous started running from the battle, disorganized and defeated, while the black bull took possession of the cow he had so clearly won.

The other bison did not react to Rufous as he retreated from the battleground; they displayed neither regret nor satisfaction as he moved disconsolately through their ranks. He had been defeated, and that was that. He was through forever as the commander of the herd and must now make what peace he could with himself.

This proved difficult. For the rest of that summer he stayed apart, taking his position about a quarter of a mile from the edge of the herd. Throughout the autumn he was a lost soul and not even the excitement of the massing of the herds inspirited him. Once or twice he caught a glimpse of the handsome new champion, but the two did not travel together this time, and on the return trip even the lead cow ignored him.

Winter was a trying time. When snow covered the prairies and freezing winds with temperatures far below zero swept in from the west where the mountains stood, Rufous stayed alone, turning his matted head into the storm and doggedly waiting until the blizzard subsided. Then, alone, he faced the problem of finding enough to eat, so he lowered his massive head into the snow, down two or three feet, and with slow side-to-side rhythmic swings, knocked a path in the snow, deeper and deeper, until the frozen grass at the bottom lay revealed. Then he fed, pushing his head into new drifts when the grass in any one spot was gone.

Snow froze in his matted hair. Long icicles formed on his beard. The hair on his cheeks was worn away and his face became raw, but still he stayed by himself, a defeated old bull fighting the blizzard alone until his bones were weary and his face heavy with accumulated ice.

He stayed alive. One night wolves tracked him, and once they attempted an attack, but he was too strong for them, much too strong. Methodically and with old skill he slashed them to pieces when they came near. One wolf he caught on his horn, and before it could get away, he dashed it to the ground and stamped it to a pulp, relishing each repeated thrust of his still-powerful feet. After that the wolves left him alone. An outcast he was, by his own volition, but food for wolves he would not be for many years.

The snow was extremely heavy that year, and in the mountains it accumulated to a depth of forty feet. When spring came and days of hot sun, the melting was sudden and devastating. Huge bodies of water formed and had to find some way down to the plains, so rivulets became streams and streams became rivers, and the South Platte surged out in preposterous flood.

The lead cow, having anticipated this disaster by some intuition, kept the herd at the twin pillars, where the land was high, but since Rufous no longer felt himself a part of the herd, and roamed as he wished, he chose the land that lay beside the river, where the ice was thick and where the grass would be fresh within the next few weeks. He was therefore not prepared when his refuge was abruptly engulfed in water from the mountains, and he delayed leaving for higher ground. He expected that the water would go away; instead it increased.

Now the main body of the flood hit the South Platte, inundating new regions, and Rufous was trapped. Ice floes, broken loose by the flooding, began to pile up about him, and he realized that if he stayed in that area he was doomed, so he struck out for what he remembered as higher ground, but here, too, the water had invaded, with large chunks of ice backing up against the cottonwoods.

Abandoning that possible escape route, Rufous decided to trust his fortunes on the south side of the river, but this meant that he would have to cross the river itself, something he had often done in the past but could not possibly do now. This was a wrong decision, and before he launched into the water he looked about wildly, as if searching for the lead cow to give him directions. Receiving none, he valiantly plunged into the turbulent river, felt himself carried along by its fury, and struck out forcefully for the opposite bank, now miles distant because of the flooding.

He kept his legs pumping, and had this been a normal river he would have mastered it. Even so, he trusted that he was headed safely for the opposite shore and kept swimming. As he did, he lacked the power of mind to reflect that it was the little black bull—the one he had saved and reared—that had driven him from the herd. He knew only that he was outcast.

Down the middle of the swollen river came a congregation of broken logs, ice chunks, large rolling stones and bodies of dead animals. It was a kind of floating island, overwhelming in its force as it swept along. It overtook him, submerged him, ground him relentlessly in dark waters, and passed on.

When the bison straggled over the land bridge into America he encountered a huge misshapen creature that was in many ways the opposite of himself. The bison was large in front, slight in the rear, while the native animal was very large in the rear and slight in front. The bison was a land animal; the other lived mostly in water. The beast weighed some three hundred and fifty pounds as it slouched along, and its appearance was fearsome, for its conspicuous front teeth were formidable and as sharp as chisels. Fortunately, it was not carnivorous; it used its teeth only to cut down trees, for this giant animal was a beaver.

It had developed in North America but would spread in desultory fashion through much of Europe; its residence in the streams of Colorado would prove especially fortuitous, bringing great wealth to those Indians and Frenchmen who mastered the trick of getting its pelt.

The first beavers were too massive to prosper in the competition that developed among the animals of America; they required too much water for their lodges and too many forests for their food, but over the millennia a somewhat smaller collateral strain became dominant, with smaller teeth and softer pelts, and they developed into one of the most lovable and stubborn of animals. They thrived especially in the streams of Colorado.

One spring the mother and father beavers in a lodge on a small creek west of the twin pillars made it clear to their two-year-old daughter that she could no longer stay with them. She must fend for herself, find. herself a mate and with him build her own lodge. She was not happy to leave the security in which she had spent her first two years; henceforth she would be without the protection of her hard-working parents and the noisy companionship of the five kits, a year younger than herself, with whom she had played along the banks of the stream and in its deep waters.

Her greatest problem would be to find a young male beaver, for there simply were none in that part of the creek. And so she must leave, or in the end her parents would have to kill her because she was mature enough to work for herself and her space inside the lodge was needed for future batches of babies.

So with apprehension but with instinctive hope, this young female left her family for the last time, turned away from the playful kits and swam down the tunnel leading to the exit. Gingerly, as she had been taught, she surfaced, poked her small brown nose toward shore and sniffed for signs of enemies. Finding none, she gave a strong flip of her webbed hind feet, curling her little paws beneath her chin, and started downstream. There was no use going upstream, for there the building of a dam was easier and all the good locations would be taken.

One flap of her hind feet was sufficient to send her cruising along the surface for a considerable distance, and as she went she kept moving her head from side to side, looking for three things: saplings in case she needed food, likely spots to build a dam and its accompanying lodge, and any male beaver that might be in the vicinity.

Her first quest was disappointing, for although she spotted quite a few cottonwoods, which a beaver could eat if need be, she found no aspen or birch or alders, which were her preferred foods. She already knew how to girdle a small tree, strip its bark and fell it so that she could feed on the upper limbs. She also knew how to build a dam and lay the groundwork for a lodge. In fact, she was a skilled housekeeper, and she would be a good mother, too, when the chance presented itself.

She had gone downstream about a mile when there on the shore, preening himself, she saw a handsome young male. She studied him for a moment without his seeing her, and she judged correctly that he had chosen this spot for his dam. She surveyed the site and knew intuitively that he would have been wiser to build it a little farther upstream, where there were strong banks to which it could be attached. She swam toward him, but she had taken only a few powerful strokes of her hind feet when, from a spot she had not noticed, a young female beaver splashed into the water, slapped her tail twice and came directly at the intruder, intending to do battle. It had taken her a long time to find a mate and she had no intention of allowing anything to disrupt what promised to be a happy family life.

The male on shore watched disinterestedly as his female approached the stranger, bared her powerful front teeth and prepared to attack. The stranger backed away and returned to the middle of the stream, and the victorious female slapped the water twice with her tail, then swam in triumph back to her unconcerned mate, who continued preening himself and applying oil to his silky coat.

The wandering beaver saw only one other male that day, a very old fellow who showed no interest in her. She ignored him as he passed, and she kept drifting with no set purpose.

As late afternoon came on and she faced her first night away from home, she became nervous and hungry. She climbed ashore and started gnawing desultorily at a cottonwood, but her attention was not focused on the food, and this was good, because as she perched there, her scaly tail stretched out behind her, she heard a movement behind a larger tree and looked up in time to spot a bear moving swiftly toward her.

Running in a broken line, as she had been taught, she evaded the first swipe of the slashing paw, but she knew that if she continued running toward the creek, the bear would intercept her. She therefore surprised him by running parallel to the creek for a short distance, and before he could adjust his lunge to this new direction, she had dived to safety.

She went deep into the water, and since she could stay submerged for eight or nine minutes, this gave her time to swim far from where the bear waited, because even from the bank a bear could launch a powerful swipe which might lift a beaver right onto the bank. When she surfaced, he was far behind her.