Read Ebook: Jack the Young Ranchman: A Boy's Adventures in the Rockies by Grinnell George Bird Deming Edwin Willard Illustrator

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Ebook has 2366 lines and 163052 words, and 48 pages

"JACK COULD NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THE CALF HAD NOT BEEN CHOKED TO DEATH." frontispiece

"JACK CREPT UP PAST HUGH ... AND TOOK A CAREFUL AIM." 84

"THE ANIMAL LAUNCHED ITSELF FROM ITS PERCH FULL TOWARDS JACK." 130

"RAISED HIS RIFLE TO HIS SHOULDER AND FIRED." 256

JACK, THE YOUNG RANCHMAN

JACK DANVERS

The door-bell rang, and from the library Jack heard the soft tread of Aunt Hannah, as she walked through the hall to answer it. There was a murmur of voices, and then Hannah's tones, loud and high pitched: "Guns! no indeedy, chile, ye can't leave 'em here. Not here, chile. Take 'em away. No, I don't keer if they is Mr. Sturgis'. Go 'way. I won't take 'em. Gib 'em to the policeman; ye can't get me to tetch 'em. Go 'way."

"What is it, Hannah?" said Jack, as he went to the door.

"Don't ye come here, honey. This man here, he's got some guns he wants to leave. Says they're for your Uncle Will. Don't ye go near 'em."

"These are two rifles that Mr. Genez has been sighting. Mr. Sturgis told him to deliver them here to-day," said the messenger.

"All right; give 'em to me," said Jack, as he took them; and the messenger ran down the steps.

"Oh look out, honey, look out," said Aunt Hannah, shrinking away from Jack; "they'll go off and kill you, sure."

"Pshaw, Hannah," said Jack, "what are you talking about? They wouldn't go off of themselves, and anyhow they ain't loaded."

"There, what'd I tell ye?" cried Aunt Hannah. "Do be keerful. Many's the time I heard your grandpaw say them's the most dang'ous kind. He allus did say that it was the guns that wan't loaded that went off and killed folks. 'Deed he did."

Jack took the guns up to his uncle's room, and put them on the bed, and went back to the library. He had hardly got there, and gone to the window to look out into the darkening street, when he heard the front door close and a quick, light footfall in the hall.

"Oh, Uncle Will," he said, "is that you?"

"Hello, Jack, are you there?" was the reply. "I want to speak to you," and a moment later Mr. Sturgis entered the room and stepped over to the fireplace.

"Well, Jack," said he, "are you ready to start in to-morrow to be a cowboy?"

"Yes, Uncle Will, I'm all ready," was the reply.

"You're sure you don't want to back out now? You know," added Mr. Sturgis, "that you may see some rough times. Some days you will be wet and cold and hungry, and will wish that you were in a good house and by a warm fire, with a hot meal ready for you. It isn't all fun and play and good times out on the ranch."

"I know that, Uncle Will," answered Jack, "but there must be plenty of fun, too, and I think I am going to like it."

"I believe so, too, my boy, but I want you to remember that there are two sides to almost everything. You will have lots of fun on the ranch, and that is what you think most of now, but you must remember also that it will not be all pleasure and no pain."

"Why, Uncle Will, don't you suppose I know that? A fellow's bound to be too hot or too cold sometimes, and to hurt himself now and then, but I guess I can stand it, and I don't think you need feel afraid that I'll want to come home before I have to." As he said this, Jack looked quite injured, and stood very straight.

"No, no, my boy. I don't doubt your pluck; but I want you to understand well before we start what it is that you have to look forward to.

"Now," continued Mr. Sturgis, "everything is ready for our start, and all we have to do to-morrow is to go to the train and get into the sleeping-car."

"Let's sit down in front of the fire and talk a little, Uncle Will. You have plenty of time before dinner, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have half an hour before it will be time to dress; I'll smoke a pipe and talk to you for that time. Now, ask your questions."

Jack Danvers was a New York boy about fourteen years old. He lived in East 38th Street, near Park Avenue, and Mrs. Danver's brother, Will Sturgis, had a ranch out on the Plains, on which were many horses and cattle. Mr. Sturgis spent the summer on the ranch, but often came to New York for the winter. The ranch was in a wild country, where there were bears and elk and deer and antelope, and sometimes buffalo and Indians.

Jack was not a very strong boy. He was slim and pale and spent most of his time reading, instead of playing out of doors as all boys should. In the summer when he was in the country and in the open air he grew brown and hearty, but through the winter he became slender and white again.

Jack had no brothers and sisters, and his parents were often anxious about his health. They had thought several times of moving to the country to live, so that Jack might have an out-door life all the year round, but Mr. Danvers' business was so confining that he was obliged to be in town constantly, and Mrs. Danvers was not willing to leave him.

Dr. Robertson, whom Mr. Danvers had consulted, had given much thought to the boy's case, and at last had advised his mother to send him out to his uncle's ranch for a year, or at least for a summer, telling her that a few months of rough life in the open air would do him more good than all the medicines in the world. When Dr. Robertson told her this, Mrs. Danvers at first thought the advice dreadful. She said, "Oh, doctor, I couldn't think of doing that. Why the life out there is one of constant danger and hardship. There are cowboys and Indians and wild animals of all sorts. I should never have an easy moment while Jack was away."

"My dear madam," said the doctor, "medicine is often very unpleasant to take, unpleasant for the patient and sometimes for his friends as well. I can build your boy's system up from time to time with tonics, but I can do him no permanent good. My medicines are only palliatives; the real trouble is with his environment. If the conditions of his life are changed, he will be certain to throw off the lassitude and weakness which he now feels, and to become a stout and hearty boy about whose general health you need have no farther concern; but it is important that now, when eight or ten years of schooling and study are before him, he should have a well-nourished body. I know of nothing that promise so much in this direction as a course of open-air life and vigorous exercise. Now he stays too much in the house and cares for nothing but books. This is not natural for a boy of his age. He ought to be full of animal spirits and to be working them off by climbing trees, running races and fighting. Think this matter over carefully, Mrs. Danvers, and let me know what you and your husband decide."

After much thought and many long talks, the parents had at last made up their minds to let their boy go. All preparations had been made, and on the next day Jack and his uncle were to take the train for the Far West.

"Well, Uncle Will," said Jack, "first, I want to know how long it will take us to get out to the ranch?"

"Five days, unless something happens to delay us," said Mr. Sturgis.

"Next," said Jack, "I want to know what I can do on the ranch. I want to help in the work, you know, but I don't know how to ride, or how to do anything that you have to do out there among the cattle and horses. I'll have to learn a great deal before I can be of any use."

"Yes, of course, you will have to learn. You will pick up riding and roping readily enough, but to learn the ways of the prairie and the mountains is not so easy, and unless you are with some one that knows all that and tries to teach you, it will take you a long time to learn. You can easily learn the cowboy part of your education from almost any of us out at the ranch, but there is only one man there who can teach you how to become a good mountain man; that is old Hugh Johnson. He has lived on the plains and in the mountains for more than forty years, and has hunted, trapped and fought Indians from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and from the Saskatchewan to the Rio Grande. He knows the plains and the mountains better than any one I ever saw, and is like an Indian for reading sign."

"What do you mean by reading sign, Uncle Will?" said Jack.

"Sign is a word which may mean a great many things. Sign may be the tracks of animals, or of people, or the smoke of fires, or an old camp, or clothing dropped by some one who has passed along. Anything that shows that animals or people have been in a certain place is called sign. Sign may be old or fresh, and there is always something about it that should tell you more than the mere fact that whatever made it has been there. You ought to be able to tell when the sign was made, and sometimes how it came to be made. Sometimes the sign is merely the way the wild animals act. I remember years ago, when the Sioux and Cheyennes were troublesome, I was travelling alone with Hugh, and one night when we camped, he rode out to kill a buffalo heifer. Before long he came back and told me that he had seen Indian sign, and that as soon as it was dark we must start and travel on all night. When I asked him what he had seen, he said that the animals were uneasy and the buffalo were running, and that some one was chasing them not far off. We hid our horses in a ravine and crept on top of a near-by hill from which we could see a good stretch of country. Sure enough, before long we saw buffalo running as if frightened, and a little later we saw, far off, two Indians chasing a little bunch. We lighted no fire that evening, but soon after dark rode away, and did not rest till we had put forty miles behind us."

"Do you think they would have tried to kill you, if they had seen you?" asked Jack.

"I don't know," said his uncle, "we were not taking any chances.

"Now, when you get to the ranch," he went on, "you will learn a lot about the birds and animals, and if your tastes lie that way, and you keep your eyes open, you will find out much of the life of these wild things that few people know. Although I have been out there so many years and have always tried to observe things, I see every season something that I never saw before, and learn more and more how little I really know about the beasts and the birds of the west--even those that are most common about the ranch. Only last year I saw for the first time a little blind coyote puppy dug out from a hole in a ravine and was astonished to find that, instead of being yellow it was dark blue, almost black in fact. You could get a great collection of pets together at the ranch. Young elk, young antelope and deer and wolves, possibly a buffalo calf, some foxes, and birds of a dozen different kinds, grouse, ducks, magpies, young hawks. Why, you could have a regular menagerie."

"Oh, what fun that would be," said Jack. "I should like that. But how do you catch all these things? I supposed that young deer and antelope could run so fast that they could not be caught. I thought that they ran even faster than the old ones."

"They can run very fast and they are hard to catch as soon as they are a few weeks old," said his uncle; "but when they are quite young--for the first few days after they are born--they can scarcely run at all. During this time the mother hides them, telling them, I suppose, in her own language, to lie perfectly still until she returns. The young one lies flat on the ground, and the old mother goes off a little way--not far though--and feeds about. If she sees any one coming, or if danger of any kind threatens, she runs away and only returns after it is past. Meanwhile, the little one, lying there among the grass or weeds or undergrowth, and keeping perfectly still, is not noticed by the hunter or the wild animal that is passing along, and when the mother returns, she finds it just where she left it. It is said that at this time of their lives, these young animals give out no scent, and so they are not found by the wolves, unless these brutes happen to come right upon them."

"Well, but how do you catch them then?" said Jack.

"When we see an old doe antelope by herself on the prairie at about the season of the year when the young are born, we watch her and we can tell pretty well whether she has a young one or not. If we think she has a kid, we can get some idea of where it is hidden by the way the mother acts. Then the only way to find it is to go to the place and search the ground over foot by foot, until the young one is found or the task is given up. Usually both kids will be found side by side, but sometimes they are three or four feet apart. When they are taken up, they do not struggle or try to get away. They hang perfectly limp, and if you try to make them stand up, their legs give way under them and they sink down again. It is often twenty-four hours before they seem to take any interest in what is going on about them, but when they get hungry, and after they have once drunk some milk, they are tame, and as soon as they become strong, very playful. Young antelope are not always easily reared, but young deer and elk are more hardy. If a buffalo calf is caught it can be given to a cow to rear. Wolf or coyote puppies can be reared on a bottle. Those animals do not easily become tame and trustful. They are likely to be shy and to dodge and jump away if any sudden motion is made, but when they are pleased, when any one in whom they have confidence approaches them, they lay back their ears and wag their tails and wriggle their bodies just like an affectionate dog. Once we had a young bear at the ranch for a year and a half, and he was an amusing pet. If you gave him a bottle of milk he would stand on his hind legs, and holding the bottle in both hands he would tilt it up and let the milk trickle down his throat until the bottle was empty, when he would throw it away."

"Uncle Will, I think we're going to have a splendid time out west. I don't feel as if I could wait for to-morrow to come."

"It will be here before you know it, old fellow; and we'll be at the ranch before you know it too."

PRAIRIE WOLVES AND ANTELOPE

One morning, a few days later, a train was speeding westward among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, bearing the travellers towards their summer home. The grey monotone of the prairie was unbroken by any bit of colour. The soil, the sage-brush, the dead grass that had grown the summer before, were all grey, unvaried except where a great rock or a bush taller than its fellows cast a long black shadow. Now and then the train passed close to some high butte, whose sides were gashed and gullied by deep ravines, and whose summit was crowned by a scattered fringe of black pines. Far off on either side, rose great mountains, covered with a mantle of snow, the most distant looking like far-off white clouds. From this snowy covering long fingers of white ran down the narrow valleys and ravines, seeming like white clasps holding the covering close in its place. The nearer foothills were white towards their tops, and against the shining snow the black pine trees stood out in strong contrast. Scattered over the grey plain were horses and cattle, most of them in little herds, but now and then a single cow was seen and near her a staggering calf, which had just been born, to face the scorching heats and bitter colds of the high plains.

Suddenly as the train rushed around a low knoll, a dozen animals were seen, running swiftly along, parallel with the track, and less than three hundred feet distant. In colour they were bright yellow, almost red, with white patches and white legs, and two or three of them had black and nearly straight horns. They were graceful, and ran very swiftly, easily keeping pace with the train.

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