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Work Suspended
If compensation is possible for a summer so brief
that the growing season is limited to 55 days at best, it's the most
beautiful Indian summer on earth climaxed by elk season in the last
two weeks of October.
While friends of mine, here and elsewhere, seem
politely convinced that writing is merely a reasonably transparent
excuse for hermitism and other forms of indolent and antisocial
behavior, nevertheless the writer's trade is, always has been, and
ever will be among the most arduous means invented by man to answer
and assuage the call of his inner vanity. As much as his neighbor
toiling in the coal mines or contemplating the rear ends of a hundred
head of cattle from the back of a tired cow pony, the writer requires
his respite; his period, however brief, of rest and recuperation. Come
the 13th of every October my work, finished or not, is done for the
following week or ten days, and I've joined the majority of
able-bodied men in town, everyone buying supplies from the IGA store,
sighting in his rifle, attempting to catch his horse off the back
forty, loading the pickup truck and backing it up to the horse trailer
or camper, and kissing his wife and children goodbye, while trying to
took sorry about it.
By late morning on the 14th of October I was on my
way west to Twin Creek to collect my animals, and by midafternoon we
were rumbling along the dirt roads north from Kemmerer through Pomeroy
Basin, across the braids of the Oregon Trail, under the steep long
brow of Sheep Mountain, across South Fork of Fontenelle Creek, past
Krall's ranch, over the cattleguard that marks the National Forest
boundary, and along the base of Absaroka Ridge to Fontenelle Crossing.
Here the horse trail begins its ascent by Bear Trap Creek to my
perennial spike camp beneath Indian Mountain, but having been caught
out in the past by snowstorms and mud I've learned to continue another
six miles, following Little Fall Creek down to La Barge Creek and
parking in a meadow beside the gravel road. This extends the ride in
and out by 12 miles, but peace of mind is worth it. Last year I had
Linda Meller along to wrangle the horses for me while I devoted myself
to the hunt. Since Linda bred both animals and sold them to me for
enough money to pay for her children's orthodonture, I figure she
ought to know as well as anyone what she is doing.
Except for writing, every one of my activities is
about gear. We spent 45 minutes saddling the horses; loading on the
packs that straddle the croup behind the cantle; attaching the
lariats, canteens, bedrolls (tied into the saddle strings ahead of the
horn), and the guns slung in their leather scabbards from the D-rings
and tucked beneath the skirts; and making the necessary adjustments
and balancings. As we were about to depart a game warden, on loan for
the season from another part of the state and hence unknown to me,
drove up and asked to see my permit. Finally, at just past five
o'clock, we rode out from La Barge Creek (where Joseph La Barge was
killed by Indians in 1825) on a ten-mile ride through the shortened
light of a mid-October evening.
The horses made good time on the clay road,
arriving an hour and a quarter later at the crossing. The trail begins
as a jeep track ending at an old hunting camp, beyond which it narrows
to accommodate a single horse before going on above the floodplain of
Bear Trap Creek, where the curious beaver swim in slow circles behind
their dams. The slope rises steeply on both sides of the creek,
sagebrush and aspen on the south-facing aspect, black timber and talus
on the north. Clinging precariously to the bank, the badly eroded
trail crumbles in places beneath the horses' hooves. (I have never
aspired to be rolled on by a fully loaded horse.) At the third or
fourth turn we came upon a cow moose who stubbornly held the right of
way for several minutes; as twilight approached I reined in to glass
the long ridge high above, where the big bulls hold. Where Bear Trap
descends through a pass on the left, the trail goes right and the
angle of ascent becomes more acute. Breaking from the heavy timber, we
watched a herd of doe deer browse their way peacefully through a stand
of aspen thin as cobweb in the deepening dusk. Before the horses had
struggled up the steepest stretch to the treeless saddle, the light
was almost gone. Within the pine forest on the other side of the
saddle it was entirely gone, yet a strange glow persisted as if rising
out of the ground, which rang with a hollow sound beneath the hooves.
By it we made our way on to camp, unloaded the horses, raised the
tent, and gathered wood enough for a small fire to heat our supper of
canned beans and chile.
The alarm sounded at six-thirty in total darkness
within the nylon tent. Linda had slept badly in her lightweight bag
and could not be roused. I slipped from my own bag, fully dressed
except for my boots, crawled from the tent into a faint dawn streaked
with a few high clouds and brightening above the spires of the trees,
and lifted my orange coat and rifle from the snag where I'd placed
them the night before. The air was cold, but not cold enough to have
frozen the cold sweet water in the canteen. Moving carefully, I walked
off from camp through the subacqueous light in the direction of Indian
Ridge, already turning pink at the top where the horse trail
goes over. More carefully still--three steps forward: halt, look;
three steps forward--I began to flank the ridge, a 45-degree slope of
red clay and shale intermittently covered by deadfall, a few
windblasted old pine trees, and clumps of supple new growth replacing
them.
A movement like the drop of an eyelash caught my
attention: a tail whisking somewhere among the young trees. I put the
glasses on these and discovered a cow elk and two calves, their
cream-colored scuts turned to me. Searching farther, I saw a second
cow; farther still and a thin ray of sunlight assumed material form
out 300 yards. A spike, perhaps a forkhorn: any elk is a good elk, you
can hunt for weeks up here without seeing anything. A rock ten feet
away offered a rest. I crept to it, knelt, cradled the forestock of
the .338 Winchester Magnum in my gloved hand, took aim, and fired.
The young bull lifted his head and stared above my
own into the tops of the trees behind me as the crash of the explosion
rebounded around us. The vertical distance was greater than I had
estimated, causing me to hold too high and send the bullet a foot
above him. I settled the crosshairs on the brisket and fired again.
The bull staggered under the impact of the hit, turned slowly, and
walked behind the root mass of a fallen tree overgrown by saplings. By
the time I reached him he was stretched on the ground, with just
enough strength to scrape the duff with his hooves. I circled him
carefully, and discharged a final shot into his neck. Back in camp,
Linda had heard the reports and had coffee waiting when I arrived
there.
We were on the kill an hour later, Linda with her
camera, I with my knife, saw, and a pair of hatchets. I spent some
time and even greater effort in turning the 600-pound carcass to
position the hindquarters downhill from the front ones, and in rolling
it securely onto its back. Then, taking a pinch of belly skin, I ran
the point of the knife under it and slit the tough hide from pelvis to
brisket. The paunch, pale, slick, and warm, smelled powerfully of
sagebrush. With the knife, I cut it free of the encompassing frame of
bone and cartilage, and severed the esophagus, windpipe, heart, and
lungs--pulverized by the 250-grain slug--while the body cavity filled
with the purple blood. Then, seizing the hind legs below the elbow, I
rolled the carcass twice, three times, and spilled the guts in a pile
on the ground, saving only the liver which I placed on a tree stump
close by.
I severed the legs at the knees and elbows, cutting
first with the saw, then popping and crushing the ball joints with a
hatchet, and moved up to the neck and head, which I removed above the
shoulders. It was noon by now and we were beginning to tire,
particularly Linda who had been holding the camera all morning to
record the butchering, but still the work was only started. I paused
to chase a camp robber off the liver, which in any case was shriveling
in the sun (I don't care for the stuff myself), and to strip off my
leather vest, flannel shirt, and bandana, everything stiff with the
dried brown blood, before setting to work again in my Army wool pants
and longjohns under the hot October sun. With the knife and saw I
divided the carcass behind the short rib. Then I upended the front
half, set the blade of one hatchet across the top of the spine, and
pounded the hatchet with the head of the other. With excruciating
slowness, the blade sank into the spinal column, cleaving bite by bite
downward through bone and marrow. Many hunters pack in a chain saw for
the job of quartering, but as well as being a cumbersome tool it can
be a lethal one. Several seasons ago a game warden from Big Piney
severed his own femoral artery and bled out in minutes beside the
carcass.
It was past one o'clock when I finished quartering
the front half and began on the hind one, my hands blistered through
the bloodsoaked leather gloves, but by two the job was done and we
were set to return to camp for the horses. (Or horse: on the single
occasion when I tried to pack an elk on the gelding, he'd run over me
in his headlong flight downhill and thrown himself over an embankment
into the creek bottom.) By three we were back with the mare, who stood
patiently tied to a tree while we struggled to heave the front
quarters into the panniers, one on each side of the saddle. Then down
to camp to unload, and back to Indian Ridge for the hind ones. At four
we were once again in camp with the meat cooling on a compacted
snowbank and our insides tingling from infusions of Jim Beam cut with
handsful of snow.
While Linda gathered wood for a fire, I
picketed the horses and afterward sat crosslegged on the pine needles
to attack the Jim Beam bottle again, feeling the greatest satisfaction
I had known all year: three elk in five seasons is good work. The sun
dropped behind the ridge and immediately the darkened air chilled
about the orange flames and the column of gray smoke rising through
the pine boughs where the saddles, blankets, guns, and ropes hung
around the pitched tent. Supper was beef stew, tortillas panfried in
butter, black coffee, and whiskey. When we finished eating the stars
were out and the horses, grazing clumps of dead grass at the ends of
their picket lines, barely visible. I snubbed them to a couple of pine
trees for the night and crawled into the tent on hands and knees
behind Linda. We zippered into the bags and lay in the dark for some
minutes before one of us spoke.
"Do you think we ought to move the meat?"
"I was just laying here thinking about it."
"The horses will warn us if a bear comes."
"Uhuhn."
"Well, shall we move it?"
"Yes. Let's go move it."
We rose and went out half-dressed into the cold
dark where, seizing the great shaggy bullstinking bloody quarters
between us, we lugged them away from camp to another snow drift at the
edge of the park.
The wind got up in the night enough to shake the
tent, but at daybreak the sky was clear. Because the mare can pack
only half an elk at a time, we had two trips to make down to
the crossing and back. While Linda fixed breakfast, I hurried to
strike camp, load the packs, and settle the panniers over the mare's
saddle. The elk quarters were cold, slippery, and hard to handle,
heavier than they had seemed the day before. Linda rode out on the
gelding while I followed on foot, leading the mare.
We made slow progress on the steep trail. The dead
weight bore heavily on the mare's front legs and knees, and the
gelding flared his nostrils and blew each time a breeze carried the
scent of elk to him. But it was a splendid morning again, the sky
almost white at the horizon and cobalt overhead, the parallel ridges
dark with pine and saddled by yellow parks, the tawny desert far below
repeating on a lesser scale the series of crests and ridges rolling
eastward. On a precarious sidehill we caught up with a mule train
packing a couple of elk and a big bull moose, to which the gelding
reacted like a rodeo horse. I considered taking my sidearm from under
my coat and shooting him, but Linda protested the idea of having to
walk out.
We made Fontenelle Crossing by noon, where Linda
waited by the creek with the mare, the meat, and herself for company
while I took the gelding from her and went loping away cross-country,
proceeding from one bow in the road to the next. We reached La Barge
Creek in half an hour, and 15 minutes later were back at the crossing
again. I parked the truck and trailer in a swag in the road and looked
up the forested canyon to the distant wall of Indian Ridge, a high red
barrier keeping back the sky, where the last elk quarters waited. The
gelding stamped.
"We're burning daylight," Linda said. |
