494 
FOREST AND STREAM 
April 20, 1912 
hide for the fisherman's trout feasts that are to 
come later on. 
There is a good deer country all around here, 
and only last year a big grizzly bear wandered 
into the very outskirts of the village. Ihe 
ranchmen round about do some trapping and 
two years ago a number of consignments were 
made to Eastern fur buyers of a variety of 
furs. They included black fishers, martens, 
lynx, wildcat, mountain lion, coyotes, raccoon, 
but this season there has not been a single ship¬ 
ment because of the non-propitious conditions 
for trapping. Polecats abound in isolated local¬ 
ities, but the ranchmen have disdained to save 
the skins, when caught, much to their chagrin, 
now that skunk skins have advanced to values 
making it worth while to catch mephitis for 
other reasons than getting the varmint out of 
the way of the poultry. 
The mountain quail are migrating from the 
foothills to their mountain breeding grounds, 
but their numbers seem to be pitifully small 
this season. Many were smothered by the be¬ 
lated thick blanket of snow of the winter be¬ 
fore last, and their numbers were further re¬ 
duced last summer by the influx of predatory 
animals from the North. The latter were most¬ 
ly of a solitary habit, but scattered over such a 
large territory in their immigration, that they 
virtually constituted a horde. They included 
several varieties of wolves whose rapacity was 
not to be questioned, besides coyotes and 
swifts. 
The Sierra Nevada, at least its western slope, 
was a perfect magazine of game before the white 
man flocked to the region seeking gold on 
Alarshall’s discovery of the precious metal on 
Sutter Creek in 1848. The deer roamed through 
the forests of abietineas as in a park, bears 
were monarchs whenever they chose to be, and 
antelope fairly swarmed in the Sacramento val¬ 
ley. Grouse peopled the tamarack groves and 
doves those of the oak-clad foothills. But the 
market hunter of the early days sometimes 
kept whole mining camps in fresh meat with 
venison and birds, and many of the haunts are 
now desolate of the once abundant fauna, and 
aside from the bears, and some deer, and the 
wild pigeons of the foothills, there is not much 
of game to be seen. The doughty and intrepid 
little mountain quail—“plumed knights of the 
sierra forest”-—persist in maintaining their mi¬ 
gratory runs, but as I stated above, their ranks 
are fast being decimated. 
The Sierra Nevadas need to be restocked 
with game, and now should be the time to 
undertake it. or rather prepare the way for re¬ 
stocking. That, however, calls for another 
story, to be told anon. 
Before I close, Mr. Editor, allow me to com¬ 
pliment you on the excellence of the “Fishing 
Number” of Forest and Stre.am of March 23. 
My copy of that issue is going to be one of 
the attributes in my literal illustration of that 
verse in Omar Khayam’s Rubaiyat that speaks 
of the scene under the bough on the banks or 
the brook with “thou,” the “jug,” the “loaf” and 
the “book,” the fishing number of the gentleman 
sportsmen’s organ of America to be the “book.” 
“Dost like the picture?” I do. And I’m go¬ 
ing to have the trout “a la Thaddeus.” That 
account of Ladd Plumley’s of “Fishing 
Lunches” puts me in mind of old Doc. Both- 
well’s trout breakfast at his cabin at the base 
of Hotchkiss peak, at the lower end of Lake 
San Christobal in the San Juan region of South¬ 
western Colorado. “Doc” was one of those 
bachelor miners who were seeking a pot of gold 
at the foot of a rainbow, but managed to live 
in spite of the idiosyncracies of Dame Fortuna. 
Lake San Christobal, where he lived, was one 
of those liquid emerald beauty spots, surrounded 
by high mountain peaks, and which had 
thoughtfully—by such men as Bothwell—been 
stocked with rainbow, Dolly Varden, mountain 
and Eastern brook trout. The resultant hy¬ 
brids, or mongrels, if you will, often obtained 
large size in a few short years, and the kills 
were of a kind that the Denver newspapers re¬ 
fused to give credence to, though I saw many 
that “Billy” Laughton caught ranging in 
weight from seven to fifteen pounds, and of the 
kaleidoscopic beauty of the dying dolphin. 
Bothwell seldom caught any of that size, but 
he had great luck in filling his basket of an 
evening with a mess averaging half a pound 
O N fording the wide shallow North Fork I 
entered a wide territory upon which the 
grass of the former season was still stand¬ 
ing. In New England this growth would have been 
called rushes. The stalks were as largs as one’s 
finger and so tall that from my seat on Skeezik’s 
back I could barely reach the bushy tops. Late in 
the afternoon of a sudden up went the pony’s 
head, his ears cocked forward while he sniffed 
significantly to windward. Then with a snort 
he wheeled about and I had all that I could do 
to prevent him from running away. Looking 
westward, I detected a faint, reddish haze. Al¬ 
most simultaneously I noticed that the tall grass 
was swarming with coyotes and rabbits, their 
natural enmity apparently forgotten in the face 
of some common danger. Then I detected a 
faint odor of smoke, and on looking westward 
again, could plainly see clouds of yellowish 
smoke rolling upward almost to the zenith. 
Something seemed to grip my heart and I felt 
sick. Then as a realization of my predicament 
dawned upon me, my first impulse was to turn 
backward and ride for dear life in the hope of 
reaching North Fork ahead of the flames. Sec¬ 
ond thought, however, revealed the futility of 
such a course. Pulling a bit of paper from my 
saddle bag, I lighted it and tossed it into the 
grass beside the trail. The flames caught in¬ 
stantly, the grass being as dry as tinder, and 
soon there was a roaring column of Are close 
alongside. There was but little wind stirring 
when I first lighted the fire, but the flames seemed 
to create a draft of their own, and sooner than 
I can tell it, my own conflagration was racing 
down the lea, jumping and roaring like a mil- 
lion-tongued demon. Within ten minutes it was 
a mile away and I was enabled to ride safely 
upon the smoothly-swept surface, the fierce wind 
having whisked up the embers, hurling them 
along with the on-leaping flames. 
By this time the very air was quivering in 
fierce heat, and a great cloud of blazing cinders 
each. These were dressed and the inside 
sprinkled with fine salt and pepper and hung 
up on nails, by the gills—each fish separately— 
to dry in the cool night air. In the morning 
they were given a “bath” in a batter of beaten 
egg, and rolled in cornmeal, or beaten cracker, 
or a combination of both,_ and then fried in 
deep fat. 
I am not going to prolong the agony to your 
readers, by expatiating upon the merits of trout 
done Up in that style, except that by way of 
variation they were sometimes served up with 
an old-fashioned tartare sauce, or a sauce of 
melted butter incorporated with minced parsley, 
or a Spanish sauce of onions, green peppers 
and tomatoes. In the absence of such materials 
for such sauces, the fish were accompanied with 
boiled wild greens and slices of lemon or cu¬ 
cumber pickles. Of course bread and potatoes 
went along. It is fifteen years or more since I 
enjoyed those breakfasts, but they are of joy¬ 
ful memory still. 
filled the overhead air. The air became so 
stifling that I feared I would be suffocated, but 
the further I rode on to the burned-over space, 
the clearer the air became, and in a few moments 
the fire had swept by and I was safe. 
On resuming my journey I found the trail 
strewn with evidences of the fire’s fierce work. 
Dead rabbits, coyotes, birds and gophers were 
found singly and huddled in groups, while every 
now and then a writhing, hissing rattler, his 
skin scorched and shriveled, would strike im- 
potently at the pony’s hoofs. The effect of all 
this was depressing, and I became very home¬ 
sick as I loped along in the gathering twilight. 
I did not relish the thought of making camp 
amid this grewsome holocaust, consequently I 
kept traveling. At last, shortly before 10 o’clock, 
I reached a small creek with its fringe of timber, 
and here I spent the night. 
That was a night to be remembered. It seemed 
as though a majority of the coyotes left alive 
after the fire had congregated in that timber, and 
each coyote deemed it incumbent upon him to 
out-howl his neighbor. To one who has never 
heard the cry of a prairie wolf, it would be use¬ 
less to try to give him any adequate conception 
of what it is like. I had been told that the 
coyote is an arrant coward and that he would 
never attack a man, even though backed by 
thousands in the summer season when rabbits 
and prairie hens were available. Previous to 
that night I had placed full reliance upon that 
information, but when every now and then a 
full chorus of yells would break out almost in 
my very ear, I greatly feared lest a coyote prece¬ 
dent was about to be established. 
One day I lost the trail and finally abandoned 
the search and struck westward across the un¬ 
broken plain. I discovered not long afterward 
that this was not only a mistaken move, but one 
of the most foolish imaginable, which none but 
a tenderfoot would have undertaken. But with 
the supreme carelessness of inexperience I kept 
Across the Plains in Early Days 
By SAMUEL MANSFIELD STONE 
{Continued from last week.) 
