378 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Mat 5, 1894. 



the facts and knows what a winter trail in the Rockies 

 means. 



Burgess's story of the capture, as told by himself, 

 simply and modestly, would make it out no great thing. 

 This story I heard from Burgess himself at Norris Station, 

 which point he had reached, coming out with his pris- 

 oner at the same time the Forest and Stream party made 

 it, going in. We spent the night there together. 



"I expect probably I was pretty lucky," said he. 

 "Everything seemed to work in my favor. I got out 

 early and hit the trail not long after daybreak. After I 

 had found the cache of heads and the tepee, over on 

 Astringent Creek, in the Pelican Valley, I heard the 

 shooting, six shots. The six shots killed five buffalo. 

 Howell made his killing out in a little valley, and when I 

 saw him he was about 400yds. away from the cover of the 

 timber. I knew I had to cross that open space before I 

 could get him sure. I had no rifle, but only an army 

 revolver, ,38cal., the new model. You know a revolver 

 isn't lawfully able to hold the drop on a man as far as a 

 rifle. I wouldn't have needed to get so close with a rifle 

 before ordering him to throw up his hands. Howell's rifle 

 was leaning against a dead buffalo, about 15ft. away from 

 him. His hat was sort of flapped down over his eyes, and 

 his head was toward me. He was leaning over, skinning 

 on the head of one of the buffalo. His dog, though I 

 didn't know it at first, was curled up under the hindleg of 

 the dead buffalo. The wind was so the dog didn't smell 

 me, or that would have settled it. That was lucky, wasn't 

 it? Howell was going to kill the dog, after I took bim, 

 because the dog didn't bark at me and warn him. I 

 wouldn't let him kill it. That's the dog outside — a bob- 

 tailed, curly, sort of half-shepherd. It can get along on 

 a snowshoe trail the best of any dog I ever saw, and it 

 had followed Howell all through the journey, and was his 

 only companion. 



"I thought I could maybe get across without Howell 

 seeing or hearing me, for the wind was blowing very 

 hard. So I started over from cover, going as fast as I 

 could travel. Right square across the way I found a 

 ditch about 10ft. wide, and you know how hard it is to 

 make a jump with snowshoes on level ground. I had to 

 try it, anyhow, and some way I got over. I ran up to 

 within 15ft. of Howell, between him and his gun, before 

 I called to him to throw up his hands, and that was the 

 first he knew of any one but him being anywhere in that 

 country. He kind of stopped and stood stupid like, and I 

 told him to drop his knife. He did that and then I called 

 Troike, and we got ready to come on over to the hotel. It 

 was so late by the time I found Howell — you see he was 

 a long way from his cache or his camp — that we didn't 

 stop to open up any of the dead buffalo. We tried to 

 bring in some heads, but we found we couldn't, so we left 

 them. 



"Howell had been in camp over there for a long time. 

 I only found 6 heads cached. He wrapped them up in 

 gunny sacks and then hoisted them up in trees so the 

 wolves couldn't get at them. He had a block and tackle, 

 so that he could ran a heavy head up into a tree without 

 much trouble. He was fixed for business. 



"Howell said to me that if he had seen me first, I 'would 

 never have taken him.' I asked him why, and he said, 

 'Oh, I'd have got on my shoes and run away, of course.' 

 I don't know what he meant by that, but he ; d have been 

 in bad shape if he had, unless he had taken his rifle along, 

 for I had already found his camp." 



Howell's Story. 



Howell was, we found, a most picturesquely ragged, 

 dirty and unkempt looking citizen. His beard had been 

 scissored off. His hair hung low on his neck, curling up 

 like a drake's tail. His eye was blue, his complexion 

 florid. In height he seemed about 5ft. lOin. His shoul- 

 ders were broad, but sloping. His neck stooped forward. 

 His carriage was slouchy, loose-jointed and stooping, but 

 he seemed a powerful fellow. Thick, protuding lips and 

 large teeth completed the unfavorable cast of an exterior 

 by no means prepossessing. He was dressed in outer cov- 

 ering of dirty, greasy overalls and jumper. He had no 

 shoes, and he had only a thin and worthless pair of socks. 

 He wrapped his feet and legs up in gunny sacking, and 

 put his feet when snowshoeing into a pair of meal sacks 

 he had nailed on to the middle of his snowshoes. The 

 whole bundle he tied with thongs. His snowshoes (skis) 

 were a curiosity. They were 12ft. long, narrow, made of 

 pine (or spruce), Howell himself being the builder of them. 

 The front of one had its curve supplemented by a bit of 

 board, wired on. All sorts of curves existed in the bot- 

 toms of the shoes. He had them heavily covered with 

 resin to keep the snow from sticking to them. To cap 

 the climax he had broken one shoe while in the Park — a 

 mishap often very serious indeed, as one must have two 

 shoes to walk with, and elsewise cannot walk at all. 

 With the ready resources of a perfect woodsman, Howell 

 took his axe, went to a fir tree, hewed out a three-corn- 

 ered splice about 5ft. long, nailed it fast to the bottom of 

 his broken shoe, picked out some piecps of resin, coated 

 the shoe well with it, and went on his way as well as 

 ever. He said he could travel as far in a day on those 

 shoes as any man in the party could with any other pair, 

 and I presume that is true. Moreover, Howell pulled a 

 toboggan behind him all the way from Cooke City with a 

 load of ISOlbs. None of us could pull a toboggan behind 

 skis, and we would not wear web shoes. Howell's 

 toboggan was 10ft. long, and had wide runners, like skis. 

 He said a flat-bottomed Canadian model toboggan was no 

 good, as it pulled too heavy. 



At the Cafion Hotel Howell ate twenty-four pancakes 

 for breakfast. He seemed to enjoy the square meals of 

 captivity. At Norris he was always last at table. He was 

 very chipper and gay, and willing to talk to the officers, 

 Capt. Scott and Lieut, Forsyth, on about any subject that 

 came up, though the officers mostly looked over his head 

 while he was talking. He was apparently little concerned 

 about his capture, saying, as I have already mentioned, 

 that he stood to make $2,000, and could only lose $26.75. 

 He^knew he could not be punished, and was only anxious 

 lest he should be detained until after the spring sheep 

 shearing in Arizona. He is an expert sheep Bhearer, 

 sometimes making $10 and $15 a day. He has money 

 always, and was not driven to poaching by want or 

 hunger. 



"Yes," Howell said, in reply to our questions, "I'm 

 going to take a little walk up to the Post, but I don't 

 think 111 be there long. About my plans? Well I 

 haven't arranged any plans yet for the future. I may go 

 back into thp Park again, later on. and I may not. No I 



will not say who it was contracted to buy the heads of 

 me. I had been camped over on Pelican since September. 

 It was pretty rough, of course. If you don't think it's a 

 hard trail from Cooke City to Pelican Valley, you just try 

 pulling a toboggan over Specimen Ridge. 



"If I'd seen Burgess first, he'd never had arrested me. 

 I'd have got away from him. It was so windy and 

 stormy, I never heard him till he got right up against me 

 and hollered for me to put up my hands. He was sort of 

 blowin', and was nervous like. I see I was subjec' to the 

 drop, so I let go my knife and came along." 



Private Larsen's Story. 



Larsen, one of the men Capt. Anderson sent in with 

 our party, talked with Howell later in the day, when 

 most of us were away, and Howell was freer with him. 

 Larsen says that Howell told him he had been camped 

 in the Park since September and that at first he had a 

 partner, a man by name of Noble, but that they had a 

 falling out and he run Noble out of the camp. Noble 

 went out at the south end of the Park, not going back to 

 Cooke City. Howell said there was nothing in being 

 arrested , they couldn't d o anything to him. Howell also said 

 he ' 'supposed them fellers would want to get a photo- 

 graph of him in the morning, but he wasn't going to let 

 them." (Nevertheless, one had already been made of him 

 and in the morning I got a shot at him without his con- 

 sent, while he was stooping over and fastening his shoes. 

 He tried to spoil the picture by rising and coming toward 

 me. He had told me previously that he would not have 

 any pictures taken and I was sorry to be so impolite 

 about it. Capt. Scott, who had at that time gone on 

 down the trail with Lieut. Forsyth, had said to me that 

 if I preferred it he would give me the privilege of photo- 

 graphing Howell standing on his head. On the whole I 

 believe that would have been nicer, if Howell could have 

 been induced to look pleasant. The negative is not yet 

 developed, but my impression is that he wasn't looking 

 so very pleasant over the surreptitious Forest and 

 Stream shot at him.) 



The Butcher's Work. 

 The party sent out by Capt. Anderson to bring in the 

 heads and hides of the slaughtered buffalo consisted of 

 Sergt. Kellner and two privates. They passed the in- 

 coming party between Norris and the Canon, and pushed 

 on down at a hot pace to the remote corner of the Park 

 where the butchery took place. The second day out from 

 Norris found them near the spot, but it was two days 

 later before the animals were found, a fall of snow having 

 covered them up, and Troike, the private who was with 

 Burgess at the capture, having lost his head entirely 

 about the localities. If it was so hard a spot to locate 

 among the interminable mountains, even after a man had 

 been there but a few days before, how much harder must 

 it be to locate a poacher whose whereabouts is not known 

 at all, but who has the whole great winter wilderness of 

 the Park to surround him and his doings? The only won- 

 der is that arrests can be made at all, where the country is 

 so great and so difficult, and the special police of the Park 

 limited to just one scout. The need of more scouts is too 

 apparent to require comment. 



When finally the butcher's work had been found again, 

 it was learned that most of the robes and some of the 

 heads were ruined for lack of proper care, Howell having 

 been stopped too early in his work for this. The scene of 

 the butchery was a sad sight enough for any one. who has 

 the least thoughtfulness in his make-up. The great ani- 

 mals lay slaughtered in the deep snow in which they had 

 wallowed and plunged in their efforts to escape. To run 

 up to tbem on the skis and to shoot them down one by 

 one— only six shots to kill the five buffalo outright— was 

 the work of the clumsiest butcher. In the snow these ani- 

 mals are absolutely defenseless. Howell could have killed 

 more of the band, if there had been more, and he would 

 not have stopped had there been more to kill. As I shall 

 show later, I think he had killed far more than the eleven 

 head discovered. I think his partner, Noble, left the 

 camp of his own free will, and took out a load of heads 

 at the lower end of the Park. I do not consider it im- 

 possible, from news I had after I left the Park, that 

 Howell took out some heads with him when he went out 

 to Cooke City after supplies. As Forest and Stream has 

 said, he was killing cows and calves in this last killing. 

 He had been in camp since September, and he was killing 

 cows and calves. I cannot evade the belief that he would 

 kill any buffalo he could get to. He could prepare and 

 hang up a good many in five months. 



The heads and the available robes were brought first 

 into the Lake Hotel. Capt. Anderson sent another party 

 over the long trail from the Post, and the spoils were 

 finally received at the Post the first week of April. The 

 capture of Howell had required two trips by Burgess, 

 aggregating 250 to 300 miles, one trip by the first detail of 

 three men, nearly 150 miles, and a final trip of a little less 

 than the latter distance by the detail who carried in the 

 plunder. The heavy heads and hides all had to be packed 

 in on the backs of the men. Every foot of the way had 

 to be traveled on snowshoes. No men but just these hardy 

 ones could do this work. For a time the Park had more 

 men in it than it ever had in winter time before. The stir 

 was all over this miserable specimen of humanity who 

 was heartless enough to kill all he could of the few remain- 

 ing buffalo left alive on earth to-day. These bare words 

 convey no idea whatever of the hardships and dangers 

 incurred in the winter patrolling of the Park. To criti- 

 cise the military, or to say that Capt. Anderson should 

 have caught the fellow sooner, is to display a total ignor- 

 ance of the conditions, and to be absurdly unjust as well 

 as ignorant. For such ignorance and injustice we must 

 look first in just the quarters where it should not exist. 

 Nowhere can we find an ignorance and indifference on 

 this subject equal to that which has so long existed in the 

 halls of Congress. It is time the change should come. 



No Penalty. 

 Let us remember, then, first, that Howell was killing 

 cows and yearlings; second, that the few buffalo left are 

 helpless when pursued in the snow; third, that for a 

 crime of this sort Congress provides no peiialty! As this 

 is written the word comes that the Secretary of the In- 

 terior has ordered the release of Howell from custody. 

 On this old basis he can now go into the Park again and 



tain a punishment, prompt, adequate and just. Kill a 

 Government mule and try what the U. S. Government 

 will do to you. Yet a mule can be replaced, A buffalo 

 cannot be replaced. This is the end. But kill a Govern- 

 ment buffalo, and what does the U. S. Government do? 

 Nothing! Absolutely nothing! This is the old basis. Let 

 us sincerely hope that the new basis will come soon and 

 that it will be widely different. Gentlemen of Congress 

 can surely only need to have the matter called to their at- 

 tention, and this has been done in the various measures 

 this year submitted by the members who know the facts. 



In a later article I shall advance the facts on which I 

 base the firm belief that half the buffalo of the Park have 

 been killed, and that not over 200 now remain alive. The 

 Howell killing above described has been only a part of the 

 total. Nineteen head were killed by Indians southeast of 

 the Park last fall. Seven heads were offered to a Bozeman 

 taxidermist for sale (not of these 19 heads) from Idaho 

 this winter. We found what we supposed to be 6 or 8 

 dead buffalo in the Hayden Valley. I have track of sev- 

 eral other heads that have this year appeared in Montana 

 towns. No one knows how many heads have been quietly 

 bought by Sheard or another Livingston taxidermist. 

 Certain it is, that the traceable total of buffalo killed this 

 year in the Park is alarmingly, appallingly large. There 

 are not very many more now left to kill. 



The Snowshoe Trail. 



The method of work in scouting for a poacher is simple 

 if arduous. The scout must know the country and the 

 course likely to be taken in the Park. He circles to cut 

 the trail of the man he wants. The snowshoes leave a 

 deep, plain trail on any ordinary snow (except crust), and 

 this will remain for weeks. Even if covered by later 

 snow, the trail will eventually become evident again. 

 The trail packs the snow under the line of the shoes. In 

 the spring when the snow begins to melt, a snowshoe 

 trail will not melt and sink, but will show up in the form 

 of a little ridge above the level of the snow, the other 

 snow melting and sinking below it. The poacher can get in 

 in no possible way but on snowshoes, and he cannot travel 

 without leaving a trail which for the rest of the season 

 will endure, though part of the time it may be invisible 

 under new snow. 



A Plucky Scout. 

 I can not leave this description of the Howell capture 

 without mentioning one fact showing the indomitable 

 grit of the scout Burgess who brought Howell in. We 

 were all looking out over the trail when Burgess and his 

 prisoner came in sight. Howell, of course, was ahead, 

 but we noticed that Burgess was limping very badly. 

 How he was able to travel at all was a wonder. When 

 he got in by the fire he said nothing, but took off his 

 heavy socks, showing a foot on which the great toe was 

 inflamed and swollen to four times its natural size. The 

 whole limb above was swollen and sore, with red streaks 

 of inflammation extending up to the thigh. How the 

 man ever walked I can not see. I noticed that Burgess 

 had lost the two toes next to the great toe, and that the 

 scar of the cut ran half way through the great toe. He 

 told me, quietly, that the Crow Indians did that for him. 

 They made him put his foot on a log, and amused them- 

 selves by cutting off his toes, taking two off clean and 

 nearly cutting off the great toe. Since then the circula- 

 tion had been bad in that member, and he had frozen it 

 more than once. It had been frozen again on this trip, 

 and was now in bad shape. Yet in spite of this injury, 

 which would have disabled most men, Burgess passed the 

 evening calmly playing whist, and the following morning 

 again took the trail, making the twenty miles to the P.>st 

 before evening, and delivering his prisoner safely. The 

 post surgeon, Dr. Gandy, after making examination of 

 Burgess's foot, at once amputated the great toe, thus 

 finishing what the Indians had less skillfully begun some 

 years before. E. Hough. 



909 Skoubity Buhding, Chicago. 



RAMBLING IN WYOMING. 



[Concluded from page S5U-] 

 When Yellowstone Park was reached all guns were 

 sealed and all fresh uncooked meat was taken from us 

 before we were allowed to proceed. A spool of Uncle 

 Sam's proverbial red tape was produced, several turns of 

 which were passed around the stock and lever of each 

 gun and securely tied, the knot being sealed and stamped. 

 To use the gun without disturbing this seal was impos- 

 sible. The seals were carefully examined at every 

 military station we passed, and had any been found 

 broken the gun would have been confiscated. The Park 

 is of great interest to every hunter; it is a vast breeding 

 ground for large numbers of deer and elk, and some 600 

 buffalo; thus the outlying country is continuously stocked 

 and hunting will always be good. 



It is entirely mountainous and densely timbered with 

 pine and spruce; its mountains are not rough and precip- 

 itous, and but for the timber, traveling in any direction 

 would be easy; so dense are the woodlands and so exten- 

 sive and impassable are the "windfalls" that one finds it 

 very difficult to travel even on horseback 



The Government has obviated this difficulty by build- 

 ing good roads throughout the Park; they are broad, of 

 easy grade, and well kept. Every point of interest can 

 be reached on these beautiful highways. 



Fifteen miles north of Snake River station we reached 

 Lewis Lake, the source of the Lewis Fork of Snake River, 

 where were found a camp of twenty men building a 

 Government road from West Thumb, on Yellowstone 

 Lake, to the Park's southern limits, a distance of twenty- 

 five miles. 



Lewis Lake is a splendid body of water, nearly round, 

 covering about four square miles, surrounded by a dense 

 forest growing to its very edge and vieing with the 

 famous Blue Lakes of California in the blueness of its 

 waters. 



Ten miles northward Yellowstone Lake was sighted, a 

 body of water fifteen by twenty miles, much resembling 

 the human hand in shape, and about 8,000ft. above the 

 sea level. It is the largest body of water in America at 

 such an altitude. 



The point touched was an arm of the lake called "The 

 Thumb." The hotel syndicate had erected here a large 

 tent in which was a restaurant and sleeping apartments 



kill more buffalo, and have another hunt made after him \ for the accommodation of travelers. Here was seen the 

 7 ??£ •' -TIl. nop< ? that h ? the time this f genuine tourist; it was a common sight to see him with 



? t j t m P rmt there ha y e P,? 6 ? 1 a n ew basis estab- one optic carefully protected by a round glass and carry- 

 lisbed by Congress, so that such villainy as this shall oh, I ing a pair of opera glasses and a kodak. On one ygpsm 



