When the Legends Die (30 page)

Well, he had found the track, and he had gone over the memories, and that was that. He was sorry he had acted like a fool instead of killing the damned bear, but it was too late to do anything about the now.

He put the whole thing out of his head, called it a day, went into the tent and to bed. And dreamed about his mother and the lodge and the winter she died. And chanted the death chant and waked himself up. He went outside and looked at the peaceful night, talked to the dogs till the chill got to him, then went back to bed.

W
OODWARD ARRIVED IN
the pickup with two men from the home ranch. They would herd the flock on foot, Woodward said, five miles or so down the valley today. The big truck would meet them there with the horse trailer and mounts for the herders, and the crew would have camp set up. They would go ahead and set up camp each night along the way. The trip would take about ten days.

“The boys will start moving them right out,” Woodward said. “You pack the gear and stow it in my pickup while I help them get started. They’ll take the dogs but leave the horse, and you can catch up with the flock.”

“You don’t plan on my going all the way in with them?” Tom asked.

“Not if you want to get away. I won’t really need you after we get them down out of here.”

“I’d rather not go all the way in.”

“O.K. I’m going on home tomorrow and you can ride along with me. To Piedra, or Pagosa, or all the way to Antonito, wherever you want to go.”

“That’ll be fine,” Tom started packing and Woodward went to help the herders start the flock down the valley. When he came back Tom had everything stowed. “See you in camp this evening,” Woodward said, and he drove off.

Tom mounted old Mac and started to follow, then turned back. He wanted one more look. He rode across the meadow to the place where he could see Granite Peak and Bald Mountain, and he sat in the saddle for some time, just looking. Then he turned and went back past the camp site and down toward the valley. He caught up with the flock about two miles below, the sheep strung out and grazing their way. He fell in behind them, said he would keep the drags moving, and the two herders on foot moved up to the flanks of the flock to keep the strays out of the deep timber.

They camped that night in a big meadow six miles above Piedra Town, where the rest of the crew had supper ready and bedrolls waiting. Woodward brought his plate and sat beside Tom to eat. “So you’re going back to rodeoing?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Kind of gets in your blood, I guess. If you’re really good. How long you been riding in the big time?”

“Quite a while.” Tom didn’t want to talk about it.

“Maybe I’ll go in to Denver and see you, next time around.”

Tom made no comment. They ate and Woodward went back for a second helping. When he came back he said, “Meant to ask, did you have any bear trouble up there?”

“No trouble. I only saw one bear. It got a lamb.”

“Kill it?”

“I didn’t even get a shot. It never came back.”

“Probably the one Manuel was talking about. A big old cinnamon, wasn’t it?”

“It could have been, maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?” Woodward laughed. “It
was!
Had to be. There aren’t any grizzlies left. Jim Boone shot the last one four years ago, out deer hunting over near Granite Peak. Emptied his .30-30 into it before he put it down. A big devil, old as the hills. Right, Charley?” he asked the supply man. “You saw its hide.”

“That grizzly of Jim Boone’s?” Charley asked. “Big as a horse barn! Scared the hell out of me, just looking at the hide.”

“Every now and then,” Woodward said, “somebody still reports a grizzly. Always turns out to be a big cinnamon. See one in the right light, though, he can fool you. Looks downright frosty. You ever see a grizzly?” he asked Tom.

“Years ago.”

“Dish-faced, high in the shoulder. Leaves tracks that long.” He held his hands a foot apart.

Someone spoke of the flavor of bear meat. The talk turned to wild game in general. Tom paid no attention, was almost unaware of either the talk or the men around him. Everything had changed. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that things had changed and that he had no choice. He had things straight, as he had planned to have them, but they came out at another place. He knew what he had to do. It was all clear now.

Then he heard two of the men arguing over the merits of fat bear meat and fat elk, and he got up and went to his bedroll.

The next morning he told Woodward he would go only as far as Piedra Town. Woodward nodded. “Just as you say.”

So they rode the few miles in to Piedra, Woodward paid him off and as they left the bank Woodward said, “Well, Tom Black, good luck. If things don’t pan out and you ever need a job, look me up. But I’ll plan on watching you ride in Denver.”

They shook hands and Woodward headed east, toward Pagosa and the road over the divide to Antonito and the home ranch. Tom looked around for the grocery and the hardware store. Half an hour later, in the hardware store lashing his pack, he looked out and saw the big Woodward truck, Charley at the wheel and the empty horse trailer behind it, go down the street on its way to the next camp site.

He shouldered his pack, picked up his rifle, went out and up to the end of the street. There he turned to the hillside and followed the winding goat trails through the brush. He traveled northward almost an hour before he heard the flock in the valley below him. He sat down under a pine and waited, resting his shoulders from the unaccustomed pack, till the last straggling ewe and the last herder had passed. Then he shouldered his pack again, went down the hillside to the trail along the Piedra River and resumed his journey back to Horse Mountain.

H
E STAYED AT THE
old camp site the first night, but even with the sheep gone their smell persisted. He had been so used to it all summer that he hadn’t noticed, but now it seemed to taint the air. Sitting by his fire that evening, smelling the light breeze that came to him over the old bedground, he had the wry thought that a good many things were like the sheep. You got free of them, or thought you did, but the smell of them kept coming back. Well, he told himself, that’s why he was here. He had got rid of those memory smells, all but one, and he had come back to get rid of it. He had put off his return to the arena for a week or two just to get this done, to wipe the slate clean. He was going to run that bear down, and if it was a grizzly he was going to kill it.

He drank a last cup of coffee, ignored the sheep smell, rolled up in his blanket, and slept soundly. But the sheep smell was still strong on the damp air the next morning, so, after a quick breakfast, he packed his gear and moved to the little meadow. He had seen a seep spring there a few days ago, enough water for a one-man camp. He went there, slung his pack in a tree, safe from prowlers, and set out with only his belt knife and his rifle.

He climbed the old trail through the tongue of brush to the little opening where he had seen the bear track and began to range the mountainside. The trail was cold and the mountainside was a maze of rocky ledges and talus slopes with a scattering of scrub oak and twisted pine. He climbed and he looked and half a mile farther on he found the remains of the lamb, two hoofs, a scattering of splintered bones, several patches of skin that had been gnawed by mice and pecked by magpies.

He went on, circling, and in early afternoon he found a big pine with claw marks. The gouges were high on the trunk, as high as he could reach, but that proved nothing. A rock that had been at the foot of the tree had been rolled aside, probably for the bear to get at the ants and grubs beneath it. The bear could have stood on the rock and put its claw marks on the tree before it heaved the rock aside.

He completed his circle, came back to where he started. He hadn’t found another sign, hadn’t seen one clear track. It was late afternoon. He went down to the seep spring, made camp. As he ate supper he tried to figure it. If it had been a big cinnamon it should have left more signs. A cinnamon is just a black bear in a cinnamon color phase. All bears are wanderers, but the blacks and cinnamons keep to a smaller range than grizzlies, especially if they have a convenient source of food. An old grizzly will travel ten miles overnight, stop for a light meal, then go on another ten miles or more. A cinnamon will eat, sleep, then go back to where it got the first meal. If this had been a cinnamon, Tom reasoned, it would have come back for another lamb. At least, it would have stayed around for a few days, hopeful. If it was a grizzly it probably would travel until it made a big kill, such as a deer. Then it would eat, hide its kill, sleep, then gorge again before moving on.

It didn’t add up either way. Tom had kept telling himself he had seen a grizzly. But he had had only two brief looks, first when the bear killed the lamb, then when it turned and threatened to charge him at the little clearing. He had been so excited that he followed it into the brush unarmed. Could he believe his own eyes? He had found that one track, but couldn’t he have exaggerated its size?

Woodward said, and his men agreed, that the last grizzly had been killed four years ago. Woodward could be wrong, of course. There might still be a grizzly around, a wise old bear that had outwitted them all. But the chances that it was the cub Tom had known were less than one in a hundred. A grizzly cub doesn’t reach full growth till it is six or seven years old, and there would be hazards all along the way, special hazards for a cub that had once been a pet. Some grizzlies live to be thirty, maybe even more, but even if that cub lived to grow up, its chances of survival this long were slim, with persistent hunters and bear-hating ranchmen. All the odds said that the bear Tom saw kill a lamb was a big cinnamon.

But he had come back to run that bear down, identify it if possible, put an end to that last nagging hurt. This hunt had only begun. He finished his meal, cleaned his utensils, and slept.

The next morning he went halfway up the mountainside, made a big circle. Late in the day, down near the river not far from the forks, he found a patch of pines that had been taken down a few years before by a rock slide. Poking around in the tangle he found where a bear had rolled two rotting logs aside to get at the beetles, then had dug out a den of marmots or chipmunks. It must have been a big bear to have moved those big logs. It had been there several days before and the tracks it had left were all smudged.

He went up West Fork a little way and found a rotten stump that had been ripped apart, more of the bear’s work. But again there were no recognizable tracks. By all the signs, the bear was going northwest, away from Horse Mountain where he had left his gear. He was two hours from his camp, and as he worked his way wearily back up Horse Mountain he decided that if he didn’t want to spend half his time coming and going he had better move. Then he thought that if he was doing this the old way he would forget about camp, just take his rifle and his knife and maybe a small packet of food and stay with the trail till he caught up with the bear, sleeping wherever night found him. And, he thought with a bitter laugh, sing the bear chant! That’s why he had come back, he told himself—to be free of such things, to kill those memories, that last remnant of the past.

The next morning he packed his gear and took it down to the Forks, went up West Fork a little way and set up a new camp beside the stream. That afternoon he worked on up the creek and found where the bear had dug quamash—camas roots—in a grassy opening. It had ripped up quite an area, flinging big chunks of sod aside, tearing them apart to get at the quamash in them. It had been there only two days ago, three at most.

He spent two more days working the lower end of West Fork, but all he found was another place, upstream, where the bear had dug quamash. The second afternoon a chill wind blew up and the sky clouded over, and when the rain began that evening he remembered several signs of bad weather coming that he had ignored. The rain was cold, probably was falling as snow on the peaks. From the look of things it could continue all night, perhaps for several days. He got soaked finding dry wood, and before he had eaten his supper the drainage from the slope began to seep through his camp. The place he had picked was all right in dry weather, but would be miserable in the rain. He moved up the hillside to the partial shelter of a clump of spruces, rigged an inadequate roof with his small tarp, finally got a new fire going in front of it and rolled up in his damp blanket. He spent a cold, uncomfortable night.

He wakened to a gray, chill, rainy day and got soaked looking for a standing dead tree with dry wood. With a fire going at last, he cooked breakfast and tried to dry his blanket. But the gusty wind whipped the fire and blew rain into his shelter. He spent a miserable day, feeding the fire and trying to dry his gear. And trying to make sense of what he was doing. He had been here a week on this bear hunt and as far as he could see he was no closer to the bear than when he started. Why, if it was a cinnamon, didn’t it stay in one place? Why, if it was a grizzly, didn’t it either move out or make a big kill?’ There were deer around. He hadn’t seen a deer, but he hadn’t been looking for one. There were tracks.

Thinking of deer, he was hungry for venison. For a week he had been living on pancakes, bacon and trout, and his bacon was almost gone. Thinking of the soggy, half-cooked pancakes he had eaten today, his mouth watered at the very thought of venison. He told himself that he would take a deer tomorrow, if it stopped raining. Butcher out a loin and live high for the few days he would be here. One loin, that’s all he needed.

Then something deep inside said that it wasn’t right to waste meat. It wasn’t even right to take meat unless you needed it. Waste meat, and what you take to use will soon begin to stink.

He shook his head angrily at the thought. Superstition! Who was he, anyway? A clout Indian?

He felt the chill of water trickling under him and moved to a drier place and put more wood on the fire, wet wood that smoldered and smoked. No, he decided wryly, he wasn’t a clout Indian or he would have picked a better camp site when he had the chance. And seen to it that he had plenty of dry wood. And watched the weather signs. Instead of squatting on a creek bank with bad weather coming, like a fool on his first camping trip! All right, so he made a mistake. Another mistake. His first mistake was in coming back here instead of going to Albuquerque.