330 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. 26, 1911. 
An Interrupted Conversation 
By WEECHEETOWAH 
N EARLY everyone called him John and I 
call him John now in writing of him, but 
then I was younger, and besides there 
was a kind of uncouth dignity about him, so I 
always addressed him, and spoke of him as 
Mr. C. 
Do not imagine that this is fiction, for it is 
not. I merely want to jot down a few facts 
and incidents in connection with one of the 
quaintest and most likeable characters it has 
ever been my good fortune to know, even in the 
West, where 1 have met so many. 
Mountain man, prospector and hunter, John had 
been known in that region for 
years. Any old timer within two 
hundred miles of what was once 
the stage road from Camas to 
Salmon City, in Idaho, would re¬ 
member him. A Missourian by 
birth, like so many of the pic¬ 
turesque and notable types of the 
West, he had criss-crossed the 
plains, crossed and recrossed the 
Rockies, and had finally made a 
stand among the abrupt spurs and 
peaks which border the northern 
edge of the Snake River desert. 
He had passed through about all 
the wild experiences of the West 
of the early days, but either 
through sheer good luck or good 
management (probably both) had 
come through without a scratch. 
The bad man. the grizzly and the 
Indian, the snows of winter and 
the parching heat of the summer 
desert—he had known them all 
more or less intimately, and yet 
to hear him talk, his life had been 
uneventful, though I suspect that 
what to many men would have 
been adventures appalling were to him but com¬ 
monplace happenings. 
To the unsympathetic approach of a stranger 
he was outwardiy rough as the bark of a red 
fir tree, but when you once knew him, or rather, 
when he felt that he knew you, all this disap¬ 
peared, and you found in him a man of high 
ideals, hospitable, friendly, generous, and with a 
keen sense of honor. “Full of strange oaths,’’ 
but never blasphemous, his expletives, though 
varied and ingenious, were always of the in¬ 
offensive type, and how his repertory could in¬ 
clude such an inexhaustible supply of harmless 
but expressive nonsense without occasionally lap¬ 
sing into mere profanity of the common or barn¬ 
yard variety was always a puzzle to me. 
In his cabin was a half cord or more of the 
best periodicals and newspapers, and pinned to 
the log wall over the fireplace were engraved 
portraits of some of the well known authors of 
the day. 
The cabin itself nestled back in the dry canon 
(for in this country most of the canons are dry) 
and water for himself and horses had to be 
hauled in barrels from the creek seven miles 
away. To the east, down the winding gorge, 
were the foothills; to the west, about three miles 
as the crow flies, the bare, rocky peaks above 
the timber line—bare save for here and there 
the isolated patches of old snow in the hollows 
and clefts of the northern slopes. 
Throughout the West, along the lines of tourist 
travel, more or less insignificant peaks and 
canons are honored by awe-inspiring titles, but 
the great ranges in question, though charted 
roughly and incorrectly on some maps, have no 
book names. Since the time of Captain Bonne¬ 
ville, no doubt, successive parties of trappers, 
hunters and prospectors have named them to 
suit themselves and for their own convenience, 
and we used to do the same. There were Deer 
Canon, Spring Canon, Dry Green and Crooked 
Canons, Mahogany and Round Mountains and 
Pelican’s Peak, the latter so called I suppose be¬ 
cause no pelican ever went near it. 
I well remember my first visit to the cabin. I 
had been invited, and had come up for a stay 
of a few days ostensibly to hunt, but later I 
made other pilgrimages to sketch, though much 
of the interest of the place centered about the 
unique personality of John himself. 
But oh, the gruffness of him during the first 
hours of that first visit! It was almost as though 
he regretted having asked me to come, or was 
it not rather that he felt he had a reputation to 
sustain-—was he not an old timer, a mountain 
man of the old school, and I, in his eyes, a 
callow Easterner, a newcomer who had not yet 
demonstrated his fitness to survive in those rough 
surroundings? But whatever the motive, John 
was but a poor actor, for through it all I could 
detect his earnest solicitude for my comfort, his 
pleasure at having me with him, a pleasure which 
he very soon ceased even to try to disguise. 
And how he did toss the flapjacks and spin 
yarns! And how I enjoyed it all! And the con¬ 
versations we had on every conceivable subject! 
One morning we had gotten up early intend¬ 
ing to try for deer, but it happened to be one 
of those November days when the mountains are 
covered with low-lying clouds, above which the 
peaks stand out clear in the thin air of the 
higher altitudes. But at our level everything 
was shrouded in fog. It was useless to hunt, 
for aside from the impossibility of seeing game 
at any distance, it has always seemed to me that 
the damp air carries or “floats” the scent and 
so gives warning. John was of the same opinion, 
so we decided to wait in hope that the fog would 
raise. 
After breakfast, instead of beginning at once 
the usual dish washing and clearing away, we 
sat at the table and talked first on this topic, then 
on that, until finally we found ourselves launched 
on a discussion of woman's suffrage. I sat at 
the end of the table near the cabin’s one window 
which faced up the canon, and 
from time to time glanced out to 
see what the chances were for 
clearer weather. Woman’s suf¬ 
frage is a big subject, and I be¬ 
lieve has not been entirely dis¬ 
posed of yet in some parts of the 
wor’d, so that I may say we had 
only just begun, when I chanced 
to look out, and there, standing 
in the bottom of the gulch, and 
dimly visible through a partial 
clearing of the mist was a young 
buck. 
“There’s a deer, now,” I said. 
John took a quick look and re¬ 
plied: “Well, get your gun.” 
“No,” said I, “you shoot him.” 
“No, you go ahead and shoot 
him,” answered my host in such 
a tone of authority that I made 
no further reply, but took my 
rifle, opened the door, held a 
trifle over and let drive. Those 
were the days of black powder; 
the fog made the distance decep¬ 
tive and the smoke hung so long 
that I could not see the result 
of my shot, but John, standing at the window 
inside, was out of range of the smoke, and as 
the deer whirled and dashed with long jumps 
up the hill, called out: “You shot over him.” 
At the second shot, “L T nder him,” yelled John. 
At the third, “Just over,” and at the fourth, as 
the deer went out of sight among the mahogany 
and cedar, John came rushing out with, “That’s 
too bad. If you hadn’t held so high that first 
shot you’d ’a’ got him.” 
“I think I got him, anyway,” said I. “I heard 
the slide rock rattle after the last shot.” 
“Did you? Come on, then.” 
Sure enough, the deer was down, so we snaked 
him to the cabin, hung him up, and dressed him 
with all the conveniences of home. When we 
were through John stood for a moment admir¬ 
ing the result, chuckled quietly after all, but— 
what was it we were talkin’ about? Wasn't it 
woman’s suffrage?” 
Later I was telling the story to an old hunter, 
and a good friend of John’s—I think everyone 
who knew him was his friend, I never heard 
of his having an enemy—and said that I would 
have preferred to have him shoot the deer him¬ 
self. 
“How far was it?” 
THE FIREPLACE IN JOHN’S CABIN. 
