Bauman's Story

Happy Halloween -- This story originally appeared in 1892 in the book
"Wilderness Hunter" by none other than Theodore Roosevelt, and it's a
little holiday favorite of mine. What does it have to do with the
tuning list you ask? Well nothing!, but as most everything else I yap
on about here is more or less appropriate for the forum I figure one
off-topic indiscretion probably won't raise anyone's hackles too
much...

"Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be very superstitious. They
lead lives too hard and practical, and have too little imagination in
things spiritual and supernatural. I have heard but few ghost-stories
while living on the frontier, and those few were of a perfectly
commonplace and conventional type.

But I once listened to a goblin-story which rather impressed me. It
was told by a grizzled, weather beaten old mountain hunter, named
Bauman, who was born and had passed all of his life on the Frontier.
He must have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a
shudder at certain points of the tale; but he was of German ancestry,
and in childhood had doubtless been saturated with all kinds of ghost
and goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in
his mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by the Indian
medicine-men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers, and the
specters, and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest depths,
and dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes
through the regions where they lurk; and it may be that when overcome
by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed
by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the
time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was
merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this
was so or not, no man can say.

When the event occurred Bauman was still a young man, and was trapping
with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of the Salmon
from the head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, he and his
partner determined to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass
through which ran a small stream said to contain many beaver. The pass
had an evil reputation because the year before a solitary hunter who
had wandered into it was there slain, seemingly by a wild beast, the
half eaten remains being afterwards found by some mining prospectors
who had passed his camp only the night before.

The memory of this event, however, weighted very lightly with the two
trappers, who were as adventurous and hardy as others of their kind.
They took their two lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass where
they left them in an open beaver meadow, the rocky timber-clad ground
being from there onward impracticable for horses. They then struck out
on foot through the vast, gloomy forest, and in about four hours
reached a little open glade where they concluded to camp, as signs of
game were plenty.

There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and after building a
brush lean-to and throwing down and opening their packs, they started
upstream. The country was very dense and hard to travel through, as
there was much down timber, although here and there the sombre
woodland was broken by small glades of mountain grass. At dusk they
again reached camp. The glade in which it was pitched was not many
yards wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs rising round it like a
wall. On one side was a little stream, beyond which rose the steep
mountain slope, covered with the unbroken growth of evergreen forest.

They were surprised to find that during their absence something,
apparently a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among
their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and in sheer
wantonness destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were
quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to them,
busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds
and stores and lighting the fire.

While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his
companion began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a
brand from the fire to follow them up, where the intruder had walked
along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the brand flickered
out, he returned and took another, repeating his inspection of the
footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood by it a
minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked,
"Bauman, that bear has been walking on two legs." Bauman laughed at
this, but his partner insisted that he was right, and upon again
examining the tracks with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made
by but two paws or feet. However, it was too dark to make sure. After
discussing whether the footprints could possibly be those of a human
being, and coming to the conclusion that they could not be, the two
men rolled up in their blankets, and went to sleep under the lean-to.
At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise, and sat up in his
blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong,
wild-beast odor, and he caught the loom of a great body in the
darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at
the vague, threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately
afterwards he heard the smashing of the underwood as the thing,
whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the
forest and the night.

After this the two men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled
fire, but they heard nothing more. In the morning they started out to
look at the few traps they had set the previous evening and put out
new ones. By an unspoken agreement they kept together all day, and
returned to camp towards evening. On nearing it they saw, hardly to
their astonishment, that the lean-to had again been torn down. The
visitor of the preceding day had returned, and in wanton malice had
tossed about their camp kit and bedding, and destroyed the shanty. The
ground was marked up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it had
gone along the soft earth by the brook, where the footprints were as
plain as if on snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it
certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing was, it had walked off on
but two legs.

The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a great heap of dead logs and
kept up a roaring fire throughout the night, one or the other sitting
on guard most of the time. About midnight the thing came down through
the forest opposite, across the brook, and stayed there on the
hillside for nearly an hour. They could hear the branches crackle as
it moved about, and several times it uttered a harsh, grating,
long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sinister sound. Yet it did not venture
near the fire. In the morning the two trappers, after discussing the
strange events of the last 36 hours, decided that they would shoulder
their packs and leave the valley that afternoon. They were the more
ready to do this because in spite of seeing a good deal of game sign
they had caught very little fur. However it was necessary first to go
along the line of their traps and gather them, and this they started
out to do. All the morning they kept together, picking up trap after
trap, each one empty. On first leaving camp they had the disagreeable
sensation of being followed. In the dense spruce thickets they
occasionally heard a branch snap after they had passed; and now and
then there were slight rustling noises among the small pines to one
side of them.

At noon they were back within a couple of miles of camp. In the high,
bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men,
accustomed as they were, through long years of lonely wandering in the
wilderness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute or element.
There were still three beaver traps to collect from a little pond in a
wide ravine near by. Bauman volunteered to gather these and bring them
in, while his companion went ahead to camp and made ready the packs.

On reaching the pond Bauman found three beavers in the traps, one of
which had been pulled loose and carried into a beaver house. He took
several hours in securing and preparing the beaver, and when he
started homewards he marked, with some uneasiness, how low the sun was
getting. As he hurried toward camp, under the tall trees, the silence
and desolation of the forest weighted on him. His feet made no sound
on the pine needles and the slanting sun-rays, striking through among
the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in which objects at a
distance glimmered indistinctly. There was nothing to break the gloomy
stillness which, when there is no breeze, always broods over these
somber primeval forests. At last he came to the edge of the little
glade where the camp lay, and shouted as he approached it, but got no
answer. The camp fire had gone out, though the thin blue smoke was
still curling upwards.

Near it lay the packs wrapped and arranged. At first Bauman could see
nobody; nor did he receive an answer to his call. Stepping forward he
again shouted, and as he did so his eye fell on the body of his
friend, stretched beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing
towards it the horrified trapper found that the body was still warm,
but that the neck was broken, while there were four great fang marks
in the throat.

The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed deep in the soft
soil, told the whole story. The unfortunate man, having finished his
packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, and
his back to the dense woods, to wait for his companion. While thus
waiting, his monstrous assailant, which must have been lurking in the
woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers
unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long noiseless
steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached
the man, and broke his neck by wrenching his head back with its fore
paws, while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had not eaten the
body, but apparently had romped and gamboled around it in uncouth,
ferocious glee, occasionally rolling over and over it; and had then
fled back into the soundless depths of the woods.

Bauman, utterly unnerved, and believing that the creature with which
he had to deal was something either half human or half devil, some
great goblin-beast, abandoned everything but his rifle and struck off
at speed down the pass, not halting until he reached the beaver
meadows where the hobbled ponies were still grazing. Mounting, he rode
onwards through the night, until beyond reach of pursuit."

-Dan Stearns