Out of Doors--California and Oregon | Page 7

the loin, for breakfast. I never tasted better meat but
once, and that was a moose steak served us one morning at the Hotel
Frontenac in Quebec a few years ago.
We broke camp early. About noon time we had crossed the valley and
gained our new camp, which was an ideal one. There was a spring of
hot and a spring of cold iron and sulphur water within ten feet of each
other, each near a stream of cold, clear mountain water. The first thing
we did was to take a bath in the hot sulphur water. There was quite a
hole in which it boiled up. It was almost too hot for comfort, but how
cleansing it was! It took all of the sand out of our hair and beard and
eyes, and left the skin as soft as satin. After our hot bath, we cooled off
in the stream and got into our clothes. Refreshed and encouraged, we
were extremely happy.
Deer Plentiful.
Deer tracks were very plentiful. We fixed up our camp, cut up our
antelope, put a lot of it out to dry or "jerk," as the common expression
is, and then about an hour before sunset, Chauvin and I set out to look
the country over. There was plenty of timber, pinons and other pines,
and oaks, scrub and large, all full of acorns, upon which the deer were
feeding. Returning from camp, not 100 yards from it, we jumped two
bucks. We killed both of them, each getting one. Just about then, we
began to think things were coming our way. We drew the deer, and in
hanging them upon a small oak tree, I pressed a yellow-jacket with the
middle finger of my right hand. Before I got the stinger out, my upper
lip swelled up to enormous proportions, and both my eyes were swollen
shut. Chauvin looked at me with open-eyed and open-mouthed
astonishment. In a characteristic tone, native to him, he remarked, "If I
hadn't seen it, I couldn't believe it," He had to lead me to camp.
I have been very susceptible to bee stings all my life. Several years
before this a bumble bee had stung me on my upper lip, and my whole

face was swollen out of shape for many days. I suppose that fact had
something to do with the peculiar action of this sting. At any rate, I was
in great misery, and lay in camp with my eyes swollen shut for three
days before the swelling began to abate. I drank great quantities of the
sulphur water, and bathed my face in it continuously.
The morning after the yellow-jacket incident, Chauvin and the
roustabout, the latter taking my gun, left me in bed and went out after
deer. They left without breakfast, about daylight. Shortly afterwards,
two of the horses broke loose and ran through camp terror stricken. The
third horse strained at his stake rope, but did not break it. He snorted
and stamped at a great rate. The loose horses did not leave camp, but
kept up a constant running and snorting for some time. When Chauvin
came back, he found that a bear had come down from the mountains
near by, torn down and partially devoured one of the deer we had killed
the night before, not one hundred yards from where I lay in bed.
Don Elogio de Celis, a well known citizen of Los Angeles, was camped
in a canyon about a mile west of us. That afternoon he killed a grizzly
bear of pretty good proportions, and we all supposed that he was the
marauder who had visited our camp that morning.
While I was laid up Chauvin got two more bucks, several tree squirrels
and some mountain quail. We made plenty of jerky, while living off the
fat of the land.
About four or five days after I was stung, the swelling went down
sufficiently for me to see again, but I had lost my appetite for further
hunting, especially as Chauvin had had several long tramps without any
luck. We stayed in camp a couple of days longer, then, as signs of a
rainstorm were prevalent, we packed up and left camp very early one
morning, and the first day got back to Newhall. The next morning,
when we reached San Fernando, as I was not feeling any too well, I
took the train for Los Angeles, so as to avoid the hot, dusty ride in by
wagon.
For many months Chauvin repeated to our friends the extraordinary
circumstances of my lip and eyes swelling up from a yellow jacket's
sting on the finger. He had hunted and trapped all his life, but could not
get over that one incident.
What we had expected to be