Across Mongolian Plains Part 16

Our only way home lay down the river bed, for in the darkness we could not follow the trail along the cliffs. By six o'clock it was black night in the gorge.

The donkeys were our only salvation, for by instinct--it couldn't have been sight--they followed the trail along the base of the cliffs. By keeping my hands upon the back of the rearmost animal, and the two Mongols close to me, we got out of the canon and into the wider valley. When we reached the village I was hungry enough to eat chips, for I had had only three pears since six o'clock in the morning, and it was then nine at night.

Harry, limping into camp just after dark, had met my cousin, Commander Thomas Hutchins, Naval Attache of the American Legation, and Major Austin Barker of the British Army, whom we had been expecting. They had reached the village about ten o'clock in the morning and spent the afternoon shooting hares near a beautiful temple which Harry had discovered among the hills three miles from camp. The boys had waited dinner for me, and we ate it amid a gale of laughter--we were always laughing during the five days that Tom and Barker were with us.

Harry was out of the hunting the next day because his leg needed a complete rest. I took Tom out with me, while Barker was piloted by an old Mongol who gave promise of being a good hunter. Tom and I climbed the white trail to the summit of the ridge, while Barker turned off to the left to gain the peaks on the other side of the gorge. Na-mon-gin was keen for the big ram which I had missed the day before. He had a very definite impression of just where that sheep was to be found, and he completely ignored the ravines on either side of the trail.

Not half a mile from the summit of the pa.s.s, the Mongol stopped and said, "_Pan-yang_-on that ridge across the valley." He looked again and turned to me with a smile. "It is the same ram," he said. "I knew he would be here." Sure enough, when I found the sheep with my gla.s.ses, I recognized our old friend. The little ewe was with him, and they had been joined by another ram carrying a circlet of horns, not far short of the big fellow's in size.

For half an hour we watched them while the Mongols smoked. The sheep were standing on the very crest of a ridge across the river, moving a few steps now and then, but never going far from where we first discovered them. My hunter said that soon they would go to sleep, and in less than half an hour they filed down hill into the valley; then we, too, went down, crossed a low ridge, and descended to the river's edge. The climb up the other side was decidedly stiff, and it was nearly an hour before we were peering into the ravine where the sheep had disappeared. They were not there, and the hunter said they had gone either up or down the valley--he could not tell which way.

We went up first, but no sheep. Then we crossed to the ridge where we had first seen the _argali_ and cautiously looked over a ledge of rocks. There they were, about three hundred yards below, and on the alert, for they had seen Tom's hunter, who had carelessly exposed himself on the crest of the ridge. Tom fired hurriedly, neglecting to remember that he was shooting down hill, and, consequently, overshot the big ram. They rushed off, two shots of mine falling short at nearly four hundred yards as they disappeared behind a rocky ledge.

My Mongol said that we might intercept them if we hurried, and he led me a merry chase into the bottom of the ravine and up the other side. The sheep were there, but standing in an amphitheater formed by inaccessible cliffs. I advocated going to the ridge above and trying for a shot, but the hunter scoffed at the idea. He said that they would surely scent or hear us long before we could see them.

Tom and his Mongol joined us in a short time, and for an hour we lay in the suns.h.i.+ne waiting for the sheep to compose themselves. It was delightfully warm, and we were perfectly content to remain all the afternoon amid the glorious panorama of encircling peaks.

At last Na-mon-gin prepared to leave. He indicated that we were to go below and that Tom's hunter was to drive the sheep toward us.

When we reached the river, the Mongol placed Tom behind a rock at the mouth of the amphitheater. He took me halfway up the slope, and we settled ourselves behind two bowlders.

I was breathing hard from the strenuous climb, and the old fellow waited until I was ready to shoot; then he gave a signal, and Tom's hunter appeared at the very summit of the rocky amphitheater.

Instantly the sheep were on the move, running directly toward us.

They seemed to be as large as elephants, for never before had I been as close to a living _argali_. Just as the animals mounted the crest of a rocky ledge, not more than fifty yards away, Na-mon-gin whistled sharply, and the sheep stopped as though turned to stone.

"Now," he whispered, "shoot." As I brought my rifle to the level it banged in the air. I had been showing the hunters how to use the delicate set-trigger, and had carelessly left it on. The sheep instantly dashed away, but there was only one avenue of escape, and that was down hill past me. My second shot broke the hind leg of the big ram; the third struck him in the abdomen, low down, and he staggered, but kept on. The sheep had reached the bottom of the valley before my fourth bullet broke his neck.

Tom opened fire when the other ram and the ewe appeared at the mouth of the amphitheater, but his rear sight had been loosened in the climb down the cliff, and his shots went wild. It was hard luck, for I was very anxious to have him kill an _argali_.

The abdomen shot would have finished the big ram eventually, and I might have killed the other before it crossed the creek; but experience has taught me that it is best to take no chances with a wounded animal in rough country such as this. I have lost too many specimens by being loath to finish them off when they were badly hit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where the Bighorn Sheep Are Found]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Mongolian Roebuck]

My ram was a beauty. His horns were almost equal to those of the record head which Harry had killed on the first day, but one of them was marred by a broken tip. The old warrior must have weathered nearly a score of winters and have had many battles. But his new coat was thick and fine--the most beautiful of any we had seen. As he lay in the bottom of the valley I was impressed again by the enormous size of an _argali's_ body. There was an excellent opportunity to compare it with a donkey's, for before we had finished our smoke, a Mongol arrived driving two animals before him.

The sheep was about one-third larger than the donkey, and with his tremendous neck and head must have weighed a great deal more.

After the ram had been skinned Tom and I left the men to pack in the meats skin, and head, while we climbed to the summit of the pa.s.s and wandered slowly home in the twilight. Major Barker came in shortly after we reached the village. He was almost done, for his man had taken him into the rough country north of camp. A strenuous day for a man just from the city, but Barker was enthusiastic. Even though he had not killed a ram, he had wounded one in the leg and had counted twenty sheep--more than either Harry or I had seen during the entire time we had been at Wu-s.h.i.+-tu.

When we awoke at five o'clock in the morning, Torn stretched himself very gingerly and remarked that the only parts of him which weren't sore were his eyelids! Harry was still _hors de combat_ with the strained tendon in his leg, and I had the beginning of an attack of influenza. Barker admitted that his joints "creaked" considerably; still, he was full of enthusiasm. We started off together but separated when six miles from camp. He found sheep on the uplands almost at once, but did not get a head. Barker was greatly handicapped by using a special model U.S. Army Springfield rifle, which weighed almost as much as a machine gun, and could not have been less fitted for hunting in rough country. No man ever worked harder for an _argali_ than he did, and he deserved the best head in the mountains. By noon I was burning with fever and almost unable to drag myself back to camp. I arrived at four o'clock, just after Tom returned. He had not seen a sheep.

The Major hunted next day, but was unsuccessful, and none of us went to the mountains again, for I had nearly a week in bed, and Harry was only able to hobble about the court. On the 28th of October, Tom and Barker left for Peking. Harry and I were sorry to have them leave us. I have camped with many men in many countries of the world, but with no two who were better field companions. Neither Harry nor I will ever forget the happy days with them.

It was evident that I could not hunt again for at least a week, although I could sit a horse. We had seven sheep, and the group was a.s.sured; therefore, we decided to s.h.i.+ft camp to the wapiti country, fifty miles away hoping that by the time we reached there, we both would be fit again.

CHAPTER XVI

THE "HORSE-DEER" OF SHANSI

All the morning our carts had b.u.mped and rattled over the stones in a somber valley one hundred and fifty _li_ from where we had killed the sheep [Footnote: A _li_ equals about one-third of a mile]. With every mile the precipitous cliffs pressed in more closely upon us until at last the gorge was blocked by a sheer wall of rock. Our destination was a village named Wu-tai-hai, but there appeared to be no possible place for a village in that narrow canon.

We were a quarter of a mile from the barrier before we could distinguish a group of mud-walled huts, seemingly plastered against the rock like a collection of swallows' nests. No one but a Chinese would have dreamed of building a house in that desolate place. It was Wu-tai-hai, without a doubt, and Harry and I rode forward to investigate.

At the door of a tiny hut we were met by one of our Chinese taxidermists. He ushered us into the court and, with a wave of his hand, announced, "This is the American Legation." The yard was a ma.s.s of straw and mud. From the gaping windows of the house bits of torn paper fluttered in the wind; inside, at one end of the largest room, was a bed platform made of mud; at the other, a fat mother hog with five squirming "piglets" sprawled contentedly on the dirt floor. Six years before Colonel (then Captain) Thomas Holcomb, of the United States Marine Corps, had spent several days at this but while hunting elk. Therefore, it will be known to Peking Chinese until the end of time as the "American Legation."

An inspection of the remaining houses in the village disclosed no better quarters, so our boys ousted the sow and her family, swept the house, spread the _kang_ and floor with clean straw, and pasted fresh paper over the windows. We longed to use our tents, but there was nothing except straw or gra.s.s to burn, and cooking would be impossible. The villagers were too poor to buy coal from Kwei-hua-cheng, forty miles away, and there was not a sign of wood on the bare, brown hills.

At the edge of the _kang_, in these north Shansi houses, there is always a clay stove which supports a huge iron pot. A hand bellows is built into the side of the stove, and by feeding straw or gra.s.s with one hand and energetically manipulating the bellows with the other, a fire sufficient for simple cooking is obtained.

Except for a few hours of the day the house is as cold as the yard outside, but the natives mind it not at all. Men and women alike dress in sheepskin coats and padded cotton trousers. They do not expect to remove their clothing when they come indoors, and warmth, except at night, is a nonessential in their scheme of life. A system of flues draws the heat from the cooking fires underneath the _kang_, and the clay bricks retain their temperature for several hours.

At best the north China natives lead a cheerless existence in winter. The house is not a home. Dark, cold, dirty, it is merely a place in which to eat and sleep. There is no home-making instinct in the Chinese wife, for a centuries' old social system, based on the Confucian ethics, has smothered every thought of the privileges of womanhood. Her place is to cook, sew, and bear children; to reflect only the thoughts of her lord and master--to have none of her own.

Wu-tai-hai was typical of villages of its cla.s.s in all north China; mud huts, each with a tiny courtyard, built end to end in a corner of the hillside. A few acres of ground in the valley bottom and on the mountain side capable of cultivation yield enough wheat, corn, turnips, cabbages, and potatoes to give the natives food. Their life is one of work with few pleasures, and yet they are content because they know nothing else.

Imagine, then, what it meant when we suddenly injected ourselves into their midst. We had come from a world beyond the mountains--a world of which they had sometimes heard, but which was as unreal to them as that of another planet. Europe and America were merely names. A few had learned from pa.s.sing soldiers that these strange men in that dim, far land had been fighting among themselves and that China, too, was in some vague way connected with the struggle.

But it had not affected them in their tiny rock-bound village. Their world was encompa.s.sed within the valley walls or, in its uttermost limits, extended to Kwei-hua-cheng, forty miles away. They knew, even, that a "fire carriage" running on two rails of steel came regularly to Feng-chen, four days' travel to the east, but few of them had ever seen it. So it was almost as unreal as stories of the war and aeroplanes and automobiles.

All the village gathered at the "American Legation" while we unpacked our carts. They gazed in silent awe at our guns and cameras and sleeping bags, but the trays of specimens brought forth an active response. Here was something that was a part of their own life--something they could understand. Mice and rabbits like these they had seen in their own fields; that weasel was the same kind of animal which sometimes stole their chickens. They pointed to the rocks when they saw a red-legged partridge, and told us there were many there; also pheasants.

Why we wanted the skins they could not understand, of course. I told them that we would take them far away across the ocean to America and put them in a great house as large as that hill across the valley; but they smilingly shook their heads. The ocean meant nothing to them, and as for a house as large as a hill--well, there never could be such a place. They were perfectly sure of that.

We had come to Wu-tai-hai to hunt wapiti--_ma-lu_ (horse-deer) the natives call them--and they a.s.sured us that we could find them on the mountains behind the village. Only last night, said one of the men, he had seen four standing on the hillside. Two had antlers as long as that stick, but they were no good now--the horns were hard--we should have come in the spring when they were soft. Then each pair was worth $150, at least, and big ones even more. The doctors make wonderful medicine from the horns--only a little of it would cure any disease no matter how bad it was. They themselves could not get the _ma-lu_, for the soldiers had long since taken away all their guns, but they would show us where they were.

It was pleasant to hear all this, for we wanted some of those wapiti very badly, indeed. It is one of the links in the chain of evidence connecting the animals of the Old World and the New--the problem which makes Asia the most fascinating hunting ground of all the earth.

When the early settlers first penetrated the forests of America they found the great deer which the Indians called "wapiti." It was supposed for many years that it inhabited only America, but not long ago similar deer were discovered in China, Manchuria, Korea, Mongolia, Siberia, and Turkestan, where undoubtedly the American species originated. Its white discoverers erroneously named the animal "elk," but as this t.i.tle properly belongs to the European "moose," sportsmen have adopted the Indian name "wapiti" to avoid confusion. Of course, changed environment developed different "species" in all the animals which migrated from Asia either to Europe or America, but their relations.h.i.+ps are very close, indeed.

The particular wapiti which we hoped to get at Wu-tai-hai represented a species almost extinct in China. Because of relentless persecution when the antlers are growing and in the "velvet" and continual cutting of the forests only a few individuals remain in this remote corner of northern Shansi Province. These will soon all be killed, for the railroad is being extended to within a few miles of their last stronghold, and sportsmen will flock to the hills from the treaty ports of China.

Our first hunt was on November first. We left camp by a short cut behind the village and descended to the bowlder-strewn bed of the creek which led into a tremendous gorge. We felt very small and helpless as our eyes traveled up the well-nigh vertical walls to the ragged edge of the chasm a thousand feet above us. The mightiness of it all was vaguely depressing, and it was with a distinct feeling of relief that we saw the canon widen suddenly into a gigantic amphitheater. In its very center, rising from a ragged granite pedestal, a pinnacle of rock, crowned by a tiny temple, shot into the air. It was three hundred feet, at least, from the stream bed to the summit of the spire--and what a colossal task it must have been to transport the building materials for the temple up the sheer sides of rock! The valley sinners must gain much merit from the danger and effort involved in climbing there to wors.h.i.+p.

Farther on we pa.s.sed two villages and then turned off to the right up a tributary valley. We were anxiously looking for signs of forest, but the only possible cover was in a few ravines where a spa.r.s.e growth of birch and poplar bushes, not more than six or eight feet high, grew on the north slope. Moreover, we could see that the valley ended in open rolling uplands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Head of the Record Ram]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Mongolia and China, Showing Route of Second Asiatic Expedition in Broken Lines]

Turning to Na-mon-gin, I said, "How much farther are the _ma-lu_?"

"Here," he answered. "We have already arrived. They are in the bushes on the mountain side."

Caldwell and I were astounded. The idea of looking for wapiti in such a place seemed too absurd! There was hardly enough cover successfully to conceal a rabbit, to say nothing of an animal as large as a horse. Nevertheless, the hunters a.s.sured us that the _ma-lu_ were there, and we began to take a new interest in the birch scrub. Almost immediately we saw three roebuck near the rim of one of the ravines, their white rump-patches showing conspicuously as they bobbed about in the thin cover. We could have killed them easily, but the hunters would not let us shoot, for we were after larger game.

A few moments later we separated, Harry keeping on up the main valley, while my hunter and I turned into a patch of brush directly above us. We had not gone fifty yards when there was a crash, a rush of feet, and four wapiti dashed through the bushes. The three cows kept straight on, but the bull stopped just on the crest of the ridge directly behind a thick screen of twigs. My rifle was sighted at the huge body dimly visible through the branches. In a moment I would have touched the trigger, but the hunter caught my arm, whispering frantically, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

Of course I knew it was a long chance, for the bullet almost certainly would have been deflected by the twigs, but those splendid antlers seemed very near and very, very desirable. I lowered my rifle reluctantly, and the bull disappeared over the hill crest whence the cows had gone.