This story, “Terror of the Packtrain,” appeared in the April 1965 issue of Outdoor Life.
Harry Baum, one of our guides, swung himself around in his saddle, took a hurried backward glance up the steep, narrow trail, and shouted, “Get out of the way. Get off the trail!“
His hunter, Joe Knot of New York, took one look and yelled, “Get go’n. Those horns’ll kill you.”
Our wrangler plunged his mount over the edge of the trail shouting a dire warning, “Scram, you guys. Dick’s com’n!”
My husband Louis and I looked up and saw Dick, a 1,500-pound bay gelding, pause on the skyline and calmly survey the mad scramble of men and horses below him. Silhouetted on his top packs were a set of 68-inch moose antlers and a jagged pair of caribou antlers with double shovels. Dick was no fool. He knew he was nearing camp and quitting time, and nothing under God’s blue sky was going to slow him down.
He came down the trail at full speed. A timid packhorse lingered too long and received a sharp jab in the flank. She squealed and plunged off the trail. Dick galloped past her and slammed to a halt beside the huddled horses waiting to be led across the river. Dick gave a whinny and stared at the water. Louis grinned at me and said, “Sounds like Dick’s saying, ‘Come on boys, follow me. I’ll find a crossing.’” Sure enough, Dick took off with the other packhorses stringing along behind him.
Louis and I dug in our spurs, swung around the line of horses, and found a shallow riffle 500 yards upstream. We turned in our saddles to signal the two wranglers to drive them across. Instead we stopped, frozen in our saddles. Standing on top of the biggest beaver house in the Yukon was Dick, and the deepest spot in the whole Wind River was in front of him. Dick had found his own crossing.
When I left my clerking job in the State House in Olympia, Washington, for a big-game hunt to the Yukon in 1951, I fell in love with the Yukon and Louis J. Brown, my outfitter-guide. I married both of them in 1953. My boss, H. D. Van Eaton, was skeptical. “Can there really be human beings who think happiness ever after is found in a log cabin in a snow field?” he asked me. I’m one of those idiots who do, and I moved from Olympia to Mayo Landing, a log-cabin town about 247 miles north of Whitehorse.
Now, in 1955, I was tagging along behind my husband while he guided American hunters. Louis had taught me what to do in case a grizzly bear charged me, but I wasn’t prepared for Dick, by all odds the biggest clown in our string of packhorses.
Louis and I were trying to find a shallow ford to cross Yukon’s Wind River flowing at the foot of the trail when we heard the commotion.
Louis stood in his stirrups. “Get that damn horse off that beaver house,” he yelled to the men.
I gnawed my lip and wailed, “Oh Louis, Louis, he’s going to jump.”
“Every packhorse in the outfit is going to follow him too,” Louis groaned. “Dick’ll drown them all. If they get into the beavers’ food cache of cut willows, they’ll tangle and that’s the finish of them.”
Joe Knot galloped up. “Dick, Dick don’t,” he pleaded, “you’ve got my bed on you.”
“Bed?” his brother Paul scoffed. “He’s got $20,000 worth of my camera equipment on him.”
“That’s the orneriest, most cussed horse I ever saw,” Louis said. “I feel like shooting him.” It was about the twentieth time on this hunt I’d heard Dick threatened with quick execution.
Guides and wranglers raced ahead, swinging their hats and yelling. Dick looked around. Louis stormed, “Now just look at that. Look at that fool horse, will you? He knows better.” Dick stretched his neck out low over the water and bent his knees.
Louis bought Dick from the government in 1952 for $25. The Indians had been hauling timber with him. They used to overload the sleigh deliberately just to watch Dick balk, back up, and sit down on the lumber. He stubbornly refused to haul such heavy loads. It struck the Indians as funny to see a big, old, shaggy horse sitting on the lumber with his hairy lower lip drooping and quivering with indignation. The Indians rolled in the snow with laughter and thought it a huge joke. Consequently, between Dick’s stubborn disposition and the fun the Indians had, Dick never worked much and was spoiled rotten.
Every winter, Louis and Dick had a standing battle over fences. There was to be a New Year’s dance in Mayo to celebrate the arrival of 1955. Louis worked all day reinforcing the fence around the haystack. Late that afternoon, he came into the house beaming with satisfaction. “This is one time that old codger isn’t going to go through the fence while we’re gone,” he told me. “I braced it with eight-inch logs.”
We had a wonderful time at the dance that night until we arrived home in the wee hours and our car’s headlights swept across the barn lot and picked up two bright, green eyes shining from the top of the haystack. Louis slammed on the brakes. “Now look at that son of a gun,” he said. “How on earth did he get through that fence? I’ll bet he’s chewed up a month’s rations.” Dick and Louis spent the rest of the winter in dispute over the fence around that haystack, and by spring it was still a tie.
In July, we started planning for the hunting season. “I’ll be blamed if I’m going to take Dick on this hunt,” Louis announced. “Remember what he did last year?”
I remembered, and I felt my head. “I’ve had a bump on top ever since he crushed the cooktent,” I recalled. “That ridgepole made me see a million sputniks in orbit.”
“That was bad,” Louis nodded sympathetically, “but it was downright embarrassing when Dick stuck his old Roman nose through the hunters’ tent and chewed up all their cigarettes.”
“You’re not taking Dick then?” I asked.
“We’re going to have some peace. Dick’s staying home.”
Sometimes you think you’ve eliminated one source of trouble only to run into another, and that’s particularly true with a string of packhorses. Early that fall, we were getting our packtrain loaded. Equipment was piled high. Wranglers rushed to cinch packsaddles. Guides ran back and forth sorting packs.
Someone yelled in alarm, and I looked to see why. I felt like fainting. A tiny three-year-old had Trigger’s hind leg clutched in her little arms. “Nice horsy, nice horsy,” she gurgled. Trigger is the only horse in the outfit that really kicks.
What could I do? If I grabbed the child I’d most likely scare the horse. Neither could I yell at him. Thrusting my hand into my pocket, I pulled out a candy bar. Quickly kneeling, I held it out to the child. “Do you like candy? Do you like candy?” I cooed.
She held out a hand for it but still clung to Trigger with the other. I watched Trigger’s every twitch. I held the candy closer. “Come and get it,” I told her.
She let go and came running to me. Weakly, I gave her the candy. Had it been a guide or a wrangler, Trigger would have kicked his head off. I ordered all children back of the rope fence and issued warnings of good spankings for children found among the horses. Kids are just as fascinated by our packstring as I always was by the Ringling Brothers Circus back in Seattle when I was growing up.
I walked over to tell Louis about the narrow escape and stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of him packing a big, shaggy bay. He gave the horse a pat. “Dick, you old son of a gun,” he said, “you’re the only horse in the outfit that can stand up under this load.”
“Why Louis, I thought you weren’t going to take Dick.”
“Well I wasn’t,” Louis grinned sheepishly. “But I forgot I’d promised to take this hammer drill out to that old prospector on Moosehide Creek, and Dick’s the only horse that can pack it.”
“I suppose I’ll get some more bumps on my head,” I sighed.
The packhorses strung out single file as we left the end of the dirt road and started up the hunting trail. Baldy bared his big, yellow teeth and sank them into Donna’s flank. She kicked and squealed but let Baldy have his favorite place in line. Then she kicked Jim in the jaw for her own special place. A shrill squeal sounded far behind us, and a runted 1½-year-old colt named Copper came tearing up the trail to catch up. He looked so small and helpless, I promised myself I’d look after him. I soon changed my mind. With head and tail up, Copper flashed past me, and my mount Shorty gave a surprised grunt, slid back on his haunches, and almost upset me. Louis looked back and laughed. “Shorty has two hoofprints where Copper kicked him. But don’t worry, I don’t think he’s hurt bad,” he said.
About 100 yards to the right, a herd of caribou trotted past. Copper squealed and took after them as if they were long-lost relatives. The wranglers gave chase and herded him back into line.
After traveling a mile or two, the packhorses settled down, pretty much satisfied with their places. The horses were slick and fat even though the temperature had dropped to 74 below during the previous winter. It was well worth the effort of putting up hay. We make a living with our horses during the hunting season, and we don’t let them starve during the winter.
Every horse of ours has some endearing trait. Put Donna on the trail of a lost horse, and she’ll track him down every time. Dan, the big blond, kicks every drunk that comes near him. Kate, the gray with scars made by wolf fangs, has game eyes. She can spot a moose or a grizzly miles away. Harry Baum, who claims her for his saddle horse, says, “She sure let me know when she see moose or something. She twitch her ear and look. Good horse.” And so on down the line, ending with Dick the Terrible.
Six days later we arrived at our main camp situated three miles below Three River Lake on the Wind River. The Wind flows into the Peel River which, in turn, empties into the Mackenzie River about 90 miles from the Arctic Ocean. The drill had been safely delivered, and our hunters were anxious to start hunting. I overheard Paul Knot talking to Louis. “Now, Lou,” he said, “I brought a lot of expensive cameras and equipment. I’d like you to put them on the safest horse you’ve got.”
“That’s easy,” Louis said. “Dick, that big bay over there, is smart. You never catch him stuck in the mud. He’s like an amphibious tank.”
“Will he buck?”
“He’s too lazy.”
“You consider him absolutely reliable?”
“Absolutely. He’s the best horse in the outfit.”
I never realized before how much Louis loved that old scalawag.
We started out next day with Dick placidly striding along under a load of camera equipment, two cases of rum, most of the things the hunters considered valuable, plus their beds. There wasn’t room for a bottle of imported whisky, so Joe stuck it into one of Tootsie’s top packs. Tootsie also carried our flat-top, folding, dining-room table. She hated it and rammed it against every tree she could get to. She was trying to reach an old spruce when she ran into a fresh grizzly track. She screamed, pawed the air, whirled, and bucked viciously. The two top packs flew off, and the third tangled in the cinch rope and wound around Tootsie’s leg. Every time she kicked the bag flew into the air. Before it could crash to the ground, Tootsie let fly with another kick and up sailed the bag again. Joe rode up and said, “That’s the bag with the whisky in it. What a cocktail shaker! If I only had some shaved ice in it.”
I wasn’t so optimistic. “If that bottle isn’t broken to smithereens, I’ll eat my hat,” I told Joe.
The wranglers caught Tootsie and then handed something to Joe. Joe walked over to me, jerked my hat off, and said, “Start eating.” The bottle was intact.
Though Tootsie failed to break the bottle, she succeeded nicely with my table. During dinner, Joe lost his plate of soup down one hole and a pot of beans disappeared down another.
Next morning, as we were climbing a pass, I heard the wranglers cursing in exasperation. I turned to look and saw Dick standing alone on a narrow ledge. Dick loved scenery. Lush grass grew on the ledge, but Dick kept gazing out over the vast valley below. He was driving the wranglers wild. The whole packtrain was out of sight, but Dick still stood looking. Finally, a well-aimed rock broke the spell, and Dick trotted to catch up so he wouldn’t miss the next good view.
The trail was getting steeper and narrower, and I watched Dick as he edged his way around the packstring to his favorite place back of Lonny Johnny, the lead guide. Louis rode up beside me. “Look at that, now just look at that,” he groaned.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Well just look at that mess up there.”
I took another look up the trail. Dick was lying down in the middle of it. He was like a cork in a bottle. None of the horses could get past him, and they were squealing and kicking. We crawled over boulders and around horses to get to him. It was maddening to see Dick calmly reclined and nibbling on the succulent grass at the edge of a trickle of glacier water. Louis let out a hissing breath. “Now if that isn’t the craziest trick,” he moaned. “Harry, we’ll have to unload him.”
Harry Baum jerked a rope then grinned. “Boss, him smart horse. Cinch rope broke. He no buck. He lie down.”
We crossed the high part of the pass and started down. It was steep, and Shorty, my horse, stopped. I yelled and pounded him, but he wouldn’t move. Harry, riding behind, said, “Him saddle loose.”
Sure enough, when I got off, the saddle did too. For the rest of the day, I marveled at the wonderful intelligence of animals. But I vaguely wondered if Shorty really was that smart.
About 100 yards farther down the trail, he proved to me he was. He stopped again. I quickly checked my saddle. It was tight. I nudged and coaxed. Shorty stood in stubborn silence. I tried to lead him, but Shorty wouldn’t lead. He kept looking back, so I looked to see if his hind legs were caught. Seeing nothing wrong, I wondered what to do next. Shorty never stopped looking back. I turned and saw that the packhorse following us was carrying a spare saddle and it had swung under his belly. At my call, the wranglers came and fixed the saddle. When I remounted, Shorty took off at a trot.
Now we rode into the main valley of the Bonnet Plume River. The trail wound 50 feet above the water. Here and there, the banks had caved in, and we had to make wide detours. Dick had lagged and was just in front of me. Seeing another cave-in just ahead, I tried to swing in front of Dick to make him go around, but Dick’s mind was made up and he went straight ahead. He galloped past me and jumped. In horror, I watched the soft ground disintegrate under him and heard him scream as he went down the steep bank. Paul, wild with concern, leaped from his mount and skidded down the bank. He was followed by both wranglers, one with a gun. The wrangler reasoned no horse could land on a pile of rocks without breaking a leg. It seemed as though Dick was falling for hours, but he landed on some soft ground between three boulders. What’s more, he landed on his feet. The men didn’t catch him until he had climbed back onto the trail. Louis shook his head in disbelief.
We anxiously gathered around as Paul carefully checked his camera equipment. At last, he looked up rather dazed. “Dick must be enchanted. Not a thing’s broken,” he said.
That night, the northern lights gleamed cold and hard, and the moon bathed the whole landscape in bleak, eerie light. At midnight, hoofs pounded on the frost-hardened ground. I stuck my head out under the tent wall and saw a horse coming our way at a gallop. Trailing behind it was the shadowy form of a wolf. They came closer. I recognized the horse. “Louis, wake up,” I shouted. “A wolf is going to eat Dick.”
“I doubt it,” Louis grunted. “Dick’s too tough. Go back to sleep.”
At dawn I staggered sleepily to the kitchen tent. Louis greeted me with, “Can you guess what Dick did last night?”
“Yes, he kept me awake banging around camp.”
“He tipped the cache over and ate up the oats, and that’s not all. He chewed up the hunters’ washing.”
While getting breakfast that morning, I planned ahead for lunch and put enough extra potatoes on the stove so I’d have some for a salad. Suddenly, the tent jerked and wobbled. Here comes the ridgepole, I thought. Instead, there was a rattling by the stove behind me. I turned in time to see Dick’s teeth crunch down on a potato. That potato evidently tasted so good to Dick that he ignored the crash of a frying pan on his cranium. He went on chomping. I called to Louis, “Shag this beast out of my kitchen before I take my .270 to him.”
By now the hunters had their sheep, caribou, and moose, and there was only one bear to go. The packtrain was winding down the trail headed for an old caribou kill near a lake. Louis told Paul, “It’s been two weeks since you shot that caribou. Might be a grizzly on it now.”
“Could be,” he said. “I can’t go home without one.”
So Louis and Paul left us to look at the carcass, while the packtrain continued on to the next camp.
Dick and I were fighting for the honor of leading the outfit when I remembered that Dick knew where the next camp was and I didn’t. The rest of the hunters, their guides, and the wranglers were singing happily as they trailed along behind the packstring. I let Dick pass and kept away from the wicked caribou and moose horns he was carrying.
Dick had just swung around me when a grizzly bear walked out from behind a knoll. Dick took one look and whirled in mid-air. For a moment, he seemed to hang suspended, and I saw those massive horns above me. I kicked Shorty, but not in time. When Dick came down there was a sharp pain and a tearing sound at the back of my jacket. Knowing that the first thing a horse does when he sees a bear is to buck, I grabbed all available leather. Shorty and I tore back up the trail right on Dick’s tail. Seeing us bearing down on them at such frightful speed, the rest of the horses turned and bolted. The singing ended abruptly.
Seeing the commotion, Louis and Paul came galloping back. We rode on toward camp and were almost there when Dick decided to use the beaver house for a diving board, as I mentioned earlier. The wranglers yelled and shouted, but it did no good. Dick stretched his neck out farther over the water. I closed my eyes and heard a loud splash. “And I trusted that horse,” Paul groaned. “Everything’s ruined now.”
Chief and Jim, two normally sane packhorses, jumped after Dick. Chief went into a panic. He was afraid to swim across, but he couldn’t climb back onto the beaver house. He started swimming upstream, then got tangled in the beavers’ cache of cut willows. Struggling, he freed himself and floated downstream. He tried to climb the beaver house again, but fell back into the water and floundered among the willows. Louis and Harry plunged into the water to rescue him. The horse was frantic and getting dangerous to help. “Get on that log and hold his head up,” Louis yelled to Harry. “He’s going to drown. He’s got his foot caught in a loose cinch.”
Louis snatched his knife from his belt and went under. He slashed the cinches and rolled the pack off the exhausted horse. The aching cold of that sub-arctic river was taking the horse’s strength. Chief swam feebly across, joined the other two horses on the bank, and stood there shaking.
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Dick stood in a puddle of blood. He had cut one of his front feet on the rocks and could barely limp to camp. The wranglers hurriedly unpacked him, and Paul, greatly agitated, dived into the duffel bags after his photographic gear. We waited anxiously while he inspected everything carefully. At last, he turned to Louis, grinned, and said, “It’s a good thing you gave me those plastic bags and rubber bands. Not a thing got wet.”
Next morning, before we said goodbye to the hunters, Joe led Dick over to the tents. He put his battered felt hat on Dick’s head and stuck a pipe in the horse’s mouth. “Take our picture,” he said to Paul.
Sixteen more hunters came and went that season, and at last we headed for home. Dick’s foot had become infected, and he was still limping and had thinned down a lot. We didn’t pack him. The horses seemed to know we were going home, and their daily mileage increased. Every day, the snow crept farther down the mountains, and as the horses waded the creeks, ice froze on their tails and bellies. It was time to leave the high country. It felt good to be heading south, but little did we dream that we were also headed for the most spectacular stunt Dick ever pulled on us.
I was riding Bunny, a mare that had large feet and was sure-footed. Still, Louis was afraid she might fall on the ice-sheathed trail. “You better get off here and lead Bunny,” he told me.
I got off, took two steps, and fell flat on my face. The breath was knocked out of me. The packhorses slammed into Bunny. But Bunny didn’t let them by. She kicked and squealed and held them back until Louis could reach me and fling me back into the saddle. “Those crazy horses headed for home would have smashed you flat if it hadn’t been for a good horse,” Louis told me later.
Late next afternoon, we came to a deep river crossing and unpacked the horses. They’d swim while we paddled equipment across in a rubber boat. Harry looked at Dick and said, “Don’t know. Foot bad. Maybe him can’t swim. He maybe weak.”
“I think the current is too swift for him,” Louis agreed.
I was worried sick. Half the fun in life would be gone if anything happened to Dick. “What can we do?” I asked anxiously.
“Give him a pair of water wings,” Louis grinned.
“Oh, don’t be funny.”
“I mean it.”
“Where would you get water wings here in the muskeg?”
“I’m going to use our air mattresses.”
“Air mattresses? Louis Brown, you’re crazy.”
“Just watch me float that old duffer across.”
While the boys blew up our air mattresses, the horses milled around at the edge of the river. Even though Dick was weak, he wasn’t going to be left behind. Harry caught his halter. “Wait, you bag of bones,” he said. “You go across like white man.”
The men used two cinch ropes to lash an air mattress on each side of the horse. Dick looked like some creature from Mars. All that showed of him was a straggly tail, a homely mug, and four knotty knees.
We drove the horses into the water. Dick hesitated while sizing up the queer rig encasing him. He looked up. The other horses were starting to swim. Dick gave a whinny and plunged in. To our glee, the air mattresses floated him high in the water. Dick had so much buoyancy, he rode the water as though he had a caribou’s hollow hair. Harry slapped his knee, roared with mirth, and chortled, “He like motorboat.”
Dick was going so fast he plowed right through the other horses. Some went under, others scattered. They snorted with fright and swam in every direction—anything to get away from that frightful monster. Dick kept buzzing high among them. “Go on, you old fool,” we yelled at him. “Get out of there.”
Finally, Dick swam past the other horses and headed for the opposite bank. We sighed with relief, but when Dick got to shore he looked around and saw that he was alone. He gave a lonesome whinny and jumped back in. “Him drown them all,” Harry yelled.
Lonny Johnny grabbed his gun. “Shoot air mattress?” he asked, looking at Louis.
The rest of the horses were in mortal terror of Dick. Some looked as if they were sinking. Lonny aimed.
“Stop,” Louis yelled. “You think I want to sleep on the ground the rest of this trip?”
By screaming and throwing rocks, we finally got Dick turned around, and soon afterward the whole bunch reached shore. We jumped into the rubber boat and furiously paddled across. We had to catch Dick before he could put a hole in our mattresses.
When he awoke next morning, Louis groaned. “I’m stiff,” he said. “There’s a leak in my mattress.”
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This was our last day on the trail, and the horses seemed to fly. Even Dick revived enough to carry the moose rack. Eventually, we left the trail and struck the dirt road leading to Keno. Rounding a bend, we saw two unsteady customers coming out of the door of the Silver Queen Hotel’s beer parlor.
Dick galloped ahead of us. As he drew near, the two drunks clutched each other. “My God, that horse’s grow’n horns,” one of them shouted. They fled back to the safety of the parlor.
Finally, we were home, and Louis was laughing when he took the moose antlers off Dick’s back. “Well, you old son of a gun,” he said, “another season’s over. Now go prop yourself up against a haystack and keep alive until next year.”
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