Our stage in the San Juan Mountains had just gained the top of the grade
when an alert, riderless pony trotted into view on a near-by ridge.
Saddled and bridled, she was returning home down a zigzag trail after carrying
a rider to a mine up the mountain-side. One look at this trim, spirited
"return horse" from across a narrow gorge, and she disappeared behind a
cliff.
A moment later she rounded a point of rocks and came down into the
road at a gallop. The stage met her in the narrow place. Indifferent
to the wild gorge below, she paused unflinchingly on the rim as the brushing
stage dashed by. She was a beautiful bay pony.
"That is Cricket, the wisest return horse in these hills," declared
the stage-driver, who proceeded to tell of her triumphant adventures as
he drove on into Silverton. When I went to hire Cricket, her owner
said that I might use her as long as I desired, and proudly declared that
if she was turned loose anywhere within thirty miles she would promptly come
home or die. A trip into the mountains beyond Telluride was my plan.
A "return horse" is one that will go home at once when set free by
the rider, even though the way be through miles of trailless mountains.
He is a natural result of the topography of the San Juan Mountains and the
geographic conditions therein. Many of the mines in this region are
situated a thousand feet or so up the precipitous slopes above the valleys.
The railroads, the towns, society, are down in the cañons,—so near
and yet so far,—and the only outlet to the big world is through the cañon.
Miners are willing to walk down from the boarding-house at the mine; but not
many will make the vigorous effort, nor give the three to four hours required,
to climb back up the mountain. Perhaps some one wants to go to a camp
on the opposite side of the mountain. As there is no tunnel through,
he rides a return horse to the summit, turns the horse loose, then walks
down the opposite side. The return horse, by coming back undirected, meets
a peculiar transportation condition in a satisfactory manner.
The liverymen of Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride keep the San Juan
section supplied with these trained ponies. With kind treatment and
experience the horses learn to meet emergencies without hesitation.
Storm, fallen trees, a landslide, or drifted snow may block the way—they
will find a new one and come home.
The local unwritten law is that these horses are let out at the owner's
risk. If killed or stolen, as sometimes happens, the owner is the loser.
However, there is another unwritten law which places the catching or riding
of these horses in the category of horse-stealing,—a serious matter in the
West.
I rode Cricket from Silverton to Ouray, and on the way we became intimately
acquainted. I talked to her, asked questions, scratched the back of
her head, examined her feet, and occasionally found something for her to eat.
I walked up the steeper stretches, and before evening she followed me like
a dog, even when I traveled out of the trail.
For the night she was placed in a livery-barn in Ouray. Before
going to bed I went out and patted and talked to her for several minutes.
She turned to watch me go, and gave a pleasant little whinny as the barn-door
closed.
Telluride and Ouray are separated by a mountain that rises four thousand
feet above their altitude. By trail they are twelve miles apart; by
railroad, forty miles. Many people go by trail from one to the other,
usually riding to the summit, one half the distance, where the horse is set
free, and walking the rest of the way.
When Cricket and I set out from Ouray, we followed the road to the
Camp Bird Mine. We met horses returning with empty saddles, each having
that morning carried a rider from Ouray to the mine. Three of these
horses were abreast, trotting merrily, sociably along, now and then giving
a pleasant nip at one another.
We stopped and the Camp Bird Mine, and while in the office I overheard
a telephone inquiry concerning a return horse, Hesperus, who had been sent
with a rider to the summit and was more than an hour overdue. Half a
mile above the mine we met Hesperus coming deliberately down. He was
not loafing, but was hampered by a loose shoe. When he reached the Camp
Bird barn he stopped, evidently to have the shoe removed. As soon as
this was done, he set off on a swinging trot down the trail.
As Cricket and I went forward, I occasionally gave her attention,
such as taking off her saddle and rubbing her back. These attentions
she enjoyed. I walked up the steep places, an act that was plainly
to her satisfaction. Sometimes I talked to her as if she were a child,
always speaking in a quiet, conversational manner, and in a merry make-believe
way, pretending that she understood me. And doubtless she did, for
tone is a universal language.
At the summit Cricket met some old friends. One pony had been
ridden by a careless man who had neglected to fasten the bridle-reins around
the saddle-horn,— as every rider is expected to do when he starts the pony
homeward. This failure resulted in the pony's entangling a foot in the
bridle-rein. When I tried to relieve him there was some lively dodging
before he would stand still enough for me to right matters. Another
pony was eating grass by walking in the bottom of a narrow gully and feeding
off the banks. Commonly these horses are back on time. If they
fail to return, or are late, there is usually a good reason for it.
The trail crossed the pass at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet.
From this point magnificent scenes spread away on every hand. Here we
lingered to enjoy the view and to watch the antics of the return ponies. Two
of them, just released, were rolling vigorously, despite their saddles.
This rolling enabled me to understand the im-portance of every liveryman's
caution to strangers, "Be sure to tighten the saddle-cinches before you let
the pony go." A loose cinch has more than once caught the shoe of a
rolling horse and resulted in the death of the animal. A number of riderless
ponies who were returning to Telluride accompanied Cricket and me down the
winding, scene-commanding road into this picturesque mining town.
I spent a few days about Telluride riding Cricket up to a number of
mines, taking photographs on the way. Whenever we arrived at an exceptionally
steep pitch, either in ascending or in descending, Cricket invited me to get
off and walk. Unbidden she would stop. After standing for a few
seconds, if I made no move to get off, she turned for a look at me; then
if I failed to understand, she laid back her ears and pretended to bite at
my feet.
One day we paused on a point to look down at a steep trail far below.
A man was climbing up. A riderless pony was trotting down. Just
as they met, the man made a dash to catch the pony. It swerved and struck
with both fore feet. He dodged and made another bold, swift grab for
the bridle-rein, but narrowly missed. He staggered, and, before he
could recover, the pony wheeled and kicked him headlong. Without looking
back, the pony trotted on down the trail as though nothing had hap-pened.
For a moment the man lay stunned, then, slowly rising, he went limping up
the slope.
A well-meaning tenderfoot, that afternoon in Telluride, saw a riderless
pony and concluded that he had broken loose. After lively work he cornered
the pony in an alley and caught it. The owner appeared just as the stranger
was tying the pony to a hitching-post. A crowd gathered as the owner,
laughing heartily, dragged the stranger into a saloon. I leaped off
Cricket and went into the saloon after them. To the astonishment of
every one Cricket also walked in.
We left Telluride one sunny October morning with a sleeping-bag and
a few supplies. I had made plans to have a few days for the study of
forest conditions around Lizard Head and Mt. Wilson. In the neighborhood
of Ophir Loop, the first night out, the moonlight on the mountains was so
enchanting that I rode on until nearly morning.
Cricket and I were chummy. The following afternoon, while waiting
for sunset over Trout Lake, I lay down for a sleep on the grass in a sun-filled
opening surrounded by clumps of tall spruces. Trusting Cricket to stay
near, I threw her bridle-rein over her head to the ground and thus set her
free. In the sunny, dry air I quickly fell asleep. An hour later,
a snorting explosion on the top of my head awakened me. Though I was
some-what startled, the situation was anything but alarming. Cricket
was lying beside me. Apparently, while dozing, she had dropped her head
against mine, and had snorted while her nostrils were against my ear.
We wandered far from the trail, and, after a few perfect days in the
mountain heights, big clouds came in and snow fell thickly all night long.
By morning it was nearly two feet deep, and before noon several snowslides
were heard. Being a good rustler, Cricket had all the morning been pawing
into the snow, where she obtained a few mouthfuls of snowy grass. But
she must be taken where she could get enough to eat.
After thirty-six hours of storm we started down a cañon out
of the snowy wilderness under a blue sky. No air stirred. The
bright sun cast purple shadows of the pines and spruces upon the clean white
snow. After a few hours we came to a blockade. The cañon
was filled with an enormous mass of snow. A snowslide had run in from
a side gulch. We managed to get into the upper edge of this snow, where
it was thin and not compressed.
Cricket fought her way through in the most matter-of-fact manner,
notwithstanding her head and neck were all that showed above the snow.
As these return horses are often caught out in deep drifts, it is important
that they be good "snow horses". She slowly forced her way forward,
sometimes pawing to make an opening and again rearing and striking forward
with both fore feet. From time to time she paused to breathe, occasionally
eating a mouth-ful of snow while she rested. All the time I talked
encouragingly to her, saying, "Of course you can make it!" "Once more!"
When more than halfway through the snowslide mass, one of the saddle-cinches
caught on the snag of a fallen log and held her fast. Her violent efforts
were in vain. Wallowing my way along the rocks several yards above,
I descended to her side, cut both saddle-cinches, threw the saddle and the
sleeping-bag off her back, and removed the bridle. Cricket was thus
left a naked horse in the snow.
When after two hours she had made her way out, I went for the saddle
and sleeping-bag. As it was impossible to carry them, I attached the
bridle to them and wallowed my way forward, dragged them after me.
Meantime Cricket was impatiently waiting for me and occasionally gave an
encouraging hurry-up neigh.
When I had almost reached her, a mass of snow, a tiny slide from a
shelving rock, plunged down, sweeping the saddle and the bag down into the
cañon and nearly smothering me. As it was almost night, I made
no attempt to recover them. Without saddle or bridle, I mounted Cricket and
went on until dark. We spent the night at the foot of an overhanging
cliff, where we were safe from slides. Here we managed to keep warm
by a camp-fire. Cricket browsed aspen twigs for supper. I had
nothing. A number of slides were heard during the night, but none were
near us.
At daylight we again pushed forward. The snow became thinner
as we advanced. Near Ophir Loop, we passed over the pathway of a slide
where the ground had been swept bare. Having long been vigilant with
eyes and ears for slides, while on this slide-swept stretch, I ceased to be
alert. Fortunately Cricket's vigilance did not cease. Suddenly
she wheeled, and, with a quickness that almost took her from beneath me, she
made a frantic retreat, as a slide with thunderous roar shot down into the
cañon. So narrowly did it miss us that we were heavily splashed
with snow-fragments and almost smothered by the thick, prolonged whirl of
snow-dust. Cricket's vigilance had saved my life.
The masses of snow, stones, and broken timber brought down by this
slide blockaded the cañon from wall to wall. These walls were
too steep to be climbed, and, after trying until dark to make a way through
the wreckage, we had to give it up.
We spent a cold night alongside a cliff. Cricket and I each
ate a few willow twigs. The night was of refined clearness, and from
time to time I moved away from the pungent camp-fire smoke to look at the
myriads of stars that pierced with icy points the purple sky.
The clear morning brought no solution of my problem of getting Cricket
through. I could not abandon her. While she was trying to find
something to eat, I made my way up a side gulch, endeavoring to find a way
for her to the summit. From the top we could get down beyond the slide
blockade. After a time a way was found that was impossible for her at
only one point. This point was a narrow gulch in the summit. I
climbed along a narrow ledge, swept bare by the slide, then turned into a
rocky gulch which came in from the side. I was within fifteen feet of
success. But this was the width of a rocky gulch. Beyond this
it would be comparatively easy to descend on the other side of the slide wreckage
and land in the road to Telluride.
But how was Cricket to get to the other side of this gorge?
Along the right I made my way through great piles of fallen fire-killed timber.
In places this wreckage lay several logs deep. I thought to find a way
through the four or five hundred feet of timber-wreckage. Careful examination
showed that with much lifting and numerous detours there was a way through
this except at four places, at which the logs that blocked the way were so
heavy that they could not be moved. Without tools the only way to attack
this confusion of log-masses was with fire. In a short time the first
of these piles was ablaze. As I stepped back to rub my smoke-filled
eyes, a neigh came echoing to me from the side cañon below.
Cricket had become lonesome and was trying to follow me. Reared
in the mountains, she was accustomed to making her way through extremely
rugged places, over rocks and fallen trees. Going to the rim of the
cañon, I looked down upon her. There she stood on a smoothly
glaciated point, a splendid statue of alertness. When I called to her
she responded with a whinny and at once started to climb up toward me.
Coaching her up the steep places and along narrow ledges, I got her at last
to the burning log obstruction. Here several minutes of wrestling with
burning log-ends opened a way for her.
The two or three other masses were more formidable than the first
one. The logs were so large that a day or more of burning and heavy
lifting would be required to break through them. More than two days
and nights of hard work had been passed without food, and I must hold out
until a way could be fought through these other heavy timber-heaps.
Cricket, apparently not caring to be left behind again, came close to me
and eagerly watched my every move. To hasten the fire, armfuls of small
limbs were gathered for it. As limbs were plentiful on the other side
of the gorge, I went across on a large fallen log for a supply, shuffling
the snow off with my feet as I crossed. To my astonishment Cricket
came trotting across the slippery log after me! She had been raised
with fallen timber and had walked logs before. As she cleared the edge,
I threw my arms around her neck and leaped upon her back. Without saddle,
bridle, or guiding, she took me merrily down the mountainside into the wagon-road
beyond the snowslide blockade. At midnight we were in Telluride.
Directory
of Stories by Enos A. Mills
Copyright 2002 by Enos Mills Cabin,
Temporal Mechanical press
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