According To The Pocket
Hunter's Account, He Knew Where He Was, But Couldn't Exactly Say.
Three days before he had been in the west arm of Death Valley on a
short water allowance, ankle-deep in shifty sand; now he was on the
rise of Waban, knee-deep in sodden snow, and in both cases he did
the only allowable thing--he walked on.
That is the only thing to
do in a snowstorm in any case. It might have been the creature
instinct, which in his way of life had room to grow, that led him
to the cedar shelter; at any rate he found it about four hours
after dark, and heard the heavy breathing of the flock. He said
that if he thought at all at this juncture he must have thought
that he had stumbled on a storm-belated shepherd with his silly
sheep; but in fact he took no note of anything but the warmth of
packed fleeces, and snuggled in between them dead with sleep. If
the flock stirred in the night he stirred drowsily to keep close
and let the storm go by. That was all until morning woke him
shining on a white world. Then the very soul of him shook
to see the wild sheep of God stand up about him, nodding their
great horns beneath the cedar roof, looking out on the wonder of
the snow. They had moved a little away from him with the coming of
the light, but paid him no more heed. The light broadened and
the white pavilions of the snow swam in the heavenly blueness of
the sea from which they rose. The cloud drift scattered and broke
billowing in the canons. The leader stamped lightly on the litter
to put the flock in motion, suddenly they took the drifts in those
long light leaps that are nearest to flight, down and away on the
slopes of Waban. Think of that to happen to a Pocket Hunter! But
though he had fallen on many a wished-for hap, he was curiously
inapt at getting the truth about beasts in general. He believed in
the venom of toads, and charms for snake bites, and--for this I
could never forgive him--had all the miner's prejudices against my
friend the coyote. Thief, sneak, and son of a thief were the
friendliest words he had for this little gray dog of the
wilderness.
Of course with so much seeking he came occasionally upon
pockets of more or less value, otherwise he could not have kept up
his way of life; but he had as much luck in missing great ledges as
in finding small ones. He had been all over the Tonopah country,
and brought away float without happening upon anything that gave
promise of what that district was to become in a few years.
He claimed to have chipped bits off the very outcrop of the
California Rand, without finding it worth while to bring away, but
none of these things put him out of countenance.
It was once in roving weather, when we found him shifting pack
on a steep trail, that I observed certain of his belongings done up
in green canvas bags, the veritable "green bag" of English novels.
It seemed so incongruous a reminder in this untenanted West that I
dropped down beside the trail overlooking the vast dim valley, to
hear about the green canvas. He had gotten it, he said, in London
years before, and that was the first I had known of his having been
abroad. It was after one of his "big strikes" that he had made the
Grand Tour, and had brought nothing away from it but the green
canvas bags, which he conceived would fit his needs, and an
ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and
set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed
that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just
enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to
bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course
he did not put it so crudely as that.
It was no news to me then, two or three years after, to learn
that he had taken ten thousand dollars from an abandoned claim,
just the sort of luck to have pleased him, and gone to London to
spend it. The land seemed not to miss him any more than it
had minded him, but I missed him and could not forget the trick of
expecting him in least likely situations. Therefore it was with a
pricking sense of the familiar that I followed a twilight trail of
smoke, a year or two later, to the swale of a dripping spring, and
came upon a man by the fire with a coffee-pot and frying-pan. I
was not surprised to find it was the Pocket Hunter. No man can be
stronger than his destiny.
SHOSHONE LAND
It is true I have been in Shoshone Land, but before that, long
before, I had seen it through the eyes of Winnenap' in a rosy mist
of reminiscence, and must always see it with a sense of intimacy in
the light that never was. Sitting on the golden slope at the
campoodie, looking across the Bitter Lake to the purple tops of
Mutarango, the medicine-man drew up its happy places one by one,
like little blessed islands in a sea of talk. For he was born a
Shoshone, was Winnenap'; and though his name, his wife, his
children, and his tribal relations were of the Paiutes, his
thoughts turned homesickly toward Shoshone Land. Once a Shoshone
always a Shoshone. Winnenap' lived gingerly among the Paiutes and
in his heart despised them. But he could speak a tolerable English
when he would, and he always would if it were of Shoshone Land.
He had come into the keeping of the Paiutes as a hostage for
the long peace which the authority of the whites made
interminable, and, though there was now no order in the tribe, nor
any power that could have lawfully restrained him, kept on in the
old usage, to save his honor and the word of his vanished kin.
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