CHAPTER IX
THE PAMIRS AND THE POLI
“And now there came both mist and snow And it grew wondrous cold.” —COLERIDGE.
We stayed four days at Kashgar, and gathered ourselves for the last effort of the trip—our hunt for ovis poli. Round the horns of this great sheep, story and legend have clustered for ages. Forgotten for six hundred years after Marco Polo first noticed him, he was rediscovered in the late thirties of the last century by a British officer. Since then he has been the lodestar of big-game hunters. We could get but little late news of him. Indeed, many of those best posted considered the ovis poli nearly extinct.
During these four days we replenished our supplies, and packed the heads and skins to be taken out by Cutting and Cherrie. These two were following us more slowly, collecting as they travelled. At this point our trails finally split, as they planned to go out through Russia.
Every one was kind and helpful. Major Gillan, the British Consul, did all in his power to aid us. The Dotai, the Chinese Governor of the province, also was most kind. He was a cheerful old boy with a plump, round face like a russet apple. We exchanged the usual formal calls, our dinner-jackets making their last appearance. Mrs. Gillan did her best to make them moderately presentable, but they were too far gone. In spite of her efforts, we looked like dissipated waiters in a third-class restaurant on the Bowery.
The social round finished with a luncheon given us by the Dotai on the day of our departure. At the luncheon were the official family of Kashgar. The talk turned on the long-haired tiger. The Chinese General, a fine-looking old fellow with a strong, clean-cut chin, told us how some twenty years before, a tiger was supposed to have jumped into an araba just outside of Maralbashi. The driver jumped out as the tiger jumped in, evidently feeling that in this case two was not company but a crowd. The horses then bolted and dragged the tiger through the city and out the other side. Other stories followed of much the same type, interesting but suggesting Munchausen rather than George Washington. As a matter of fact, we found that none of the company had ever seen a tiger, alive or dead, and that their information was mere hearsay.
After the meal was over, we took off our draggled finery, put on our hunting-clothes, and rode after our caravan. It had started off in the morning, so we did not catch up until night.
With our pony caravan there were, as usual, two Chinese soldiers. This time, however, they were better men, or the natives of the country were of a higher social status, for there were no cases of oppression with which to deal. Our head pony man was a draggled old gray-bearded Beg, who looked like Time in a primer. He wore a long, faded red wrapper, which flapped around his thin shanks in the bitter mountain wind like a torn sail round spars in a gale. He fluttered along behind the caravan like a piece of paper in a windy city street. Last but not least was Rah Tai Koon Beg, a fat, bearded, jolly fellow, with a bright-blue coat belted in with a yellow scarf. Very often he rode with us and carried one of the rifles. The rifle-sling was not long enough to suit his figure, and the rifle was half hidden in the clothes and fat that covered his broad back.
For a couple of days we travelled through the plains. We passed from oasis to oasis. Burned and forbidding, the desert lay between. There was an endless succession of scrub bushes and sun-scorched rock, with dust-devils dancing between. Time and again we passed small oases on which the desert was marching. On their outskirts were houses half buried in sand, and dead trees whose gray, gnarled upper limbs alone stuck out of sand-dunes. Closer in, where the sand had not yet conquered, were half-submerged fields and partially covered trees whose tops were still green with leaves.
On the third day we turned due south. Soon we were among the foot-hills. The plains of Turkestan were behind us.
Turkestan, though it has been comparatively civilized for a long time, has changed but little in the last thousand years. The leaders still practise mediæval directness in dealing with those they dislike. Last year the General at Kashgar became too efficient and raised too large an army. The Governor of Turkestan descended on Kashgar unannounced, and the General’s head presently appeared over one of the gates of the city.
Perhaps the most unpleasant sight we saw in this country were the prisoners. The state considers that it has done its duty when it has thrown them into prison. It does not provide them with food. They are led each day to the gates of the city, chained there, and left to beg their food from charitable passers-by. Mowing and gibbering in their chains, their wild eyes peering from beneath their tangled black hair, their gaunt limbs showing through the filthy rags in which they were clothed, they were a gruesome sight.
The hills were more than welcome after the long weeks we had spent in the plains. Bare and red, they suggested the buttes of Colorado. We marched up the bed of a rocky stream, the trail weaving from side to side over numerous fords. About noon we saw two men approaching on horseback, who turned out to be Nadir Beg and the mail-runner from India.
Nadir Beg was the native that Gillan had got us as a guide for the ovis poli country. He was an important citizen of the town of Tashkurgan, a fine-looking man with a light complexion, a black beard and a hawk-like nose. He was a Sarikol, one of a people who live in the valleys and mountains of that name. These Sarikoli, because of their Aryan features and light complexions, are said to be descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, whose “distant footsteps” still echo down the corridors of time in northwestern India. In the East, where nothing is entirely forgotten, and little remembered with accuracy, the tradition of the great Macedonian remains as the myth of a demigod.
That evening we camped by a little Kirghiz settlement on a small plain in the valley. The principal building was a mud-walled square around a great cottonwood-tree. In it was bivouacked a caravan from Tashkurgan on its way to Kashgar. The men were good-looking lean fellows and very friendly.
Around the camp-fire we worked out our plans for the poli-hunting. Nadir Beg said that though goolja (rams) were scarce, he had seen a fine head shot by a Kirghiz near Subashi the previous winter. We accordingly decided to try that point first.
For the next two days we pushed on up the river. At times the trail was very bad. It wound along the steep sides of the mountain. The valley narrowed into a gorge through which the stream rushed so rapidly that fording was very difficult. A small boy, perhaps fourteen years old, led the head pony of our caravan. At one of the fords he fell in, but was pulled out by Nadir Beg and some of the others. After the water had been tilted out of him he seemed all right. His clothes, however, could not be worn wet in the bitter cold, so he was fitted out from various surplus stores. As he was by all odds the smallest of the party, the fit was far from good. The final touch to his attire was given by an enormous pair of knee-high boots which made him look, as he paddled along, like the Puss-in-boots of the fairy-tale.
After crossing the ford where the boy fell in, I noticed the head pony man stoop down and put a stone on a small pile that was there. That was Tauism, or nature-worship. The people of this country are nominally Mohammedans, but, like most people who live in the lonely places of the world, their religion is largely overlaid with primitive nature-worship. Wherever there was a bad ford we saw these piles of rocks. At times we saw trees with bits of rag or paper fluttering from their branches.
At one place we were delayed many hours because a part of a bridge had been destroyed. Before we could get the caravan over, we had to rebuild much of the road. Even then it took the efforts of three or four men, pushing and pulling, to get each pack-pony across. Just beyond, on the other side of the river, there were holes sunk in the rocks. I asked Nadir Beg what they were. He told me they were the remains of a bridge built in Yakoob Beg’s time. Yakoob Beg was a very competent Mohammedan who headed a successful revolt some sixty or seventy years ago. He ruled in Turkestan for a number of years. It was only after his death that China regained her control. I noticed that improvements and public works were very often credited to him by the natives. It would seem that he must have been a very able man, but perhaps it is only a case of the far hills being the greenest.
As we wound our way along, we met an occasional caravan moving toward the plains. The men were generally so bundled up that they looked like animated bolsters. A number of times we noticed poli-skins, either on their saddles or covering their bales. This encouraged us very much. When we questioned them they told us that these were the skins of arkal (female sheep) from both the Chinese and the Russian Pamirs.
Sometimes we came on great woolly Bactrian camels, which lifted their heads from their grazing and eyed us incuriously. They were in splendid shape, fat and strong. It was a constant source of wonder to us that these great animals were able to keep in such good condition feeding on the withered bushes and scant dry grass of the country.
Here we saw a type of shelter we had not seen before, a mud-and-stone yourt. The bottom was built of rough rocks, the top was of dry clay. Generally they clustered in the lee of some large rock, like chickens around a hen.
One bitter cold morning Loosa brought in a small gray mouse that he had caught in his hands. It was a new species so Kermit conscientiously skinned it, though skinning is far from pleasant when the steel cleaves to your hands from cold.
One afternoon as we were riding along we noticed a hawk pursuing a large blue rock pigeon. The latter took refuge in a hole in a crumbling mud-bank by the side of the trail. Nadir Beg and Fezildin galloped up, and a chase for the pigeon started. They scrambled down and tried to catch it by reaching into the hole where it had gone. It was really very heavy odds, for whenever they scared the pigeon out of the hole the hawk would swoop at it. At last, I am glad to say, it got off scot-free, eluding all pursuers bird and man alike, and disappeared behind a cliff.
It had now begun to be bitterly cold. The snow lay thick on the mountains. Snow flurries and sleet-storms swept across the valley nearly every afternoon. The wind blew with gusty fury. At night the tin cup of water that Kermit and I had left between us in the tent froze solid. As the trees and large bushes had all disappeared, our fires consisted nearly entirely of yak dung, with occasionally a few scrub-bush roots called burtsa by the natives. Yak dung burns with a pungent odor that is rather pleasant. It serves only for cooking, and does not warm you when the weather is really cold. It is one thing to camp in our own North woods where fuel is plentiful, and where, when the hunter comes in chilled and tired, he builds a roaring fire of birch and pine; but it is a very different matter in the Pamirs, when he arrives in camp to no fire at all. We went to bed immediately after getting to camp, for it was the only place where we could be reasonably comfortable. Even there all we could do was to lie still and think, for it was too cold to hold a book even if a candle could be kept alight in the wind. Getting up in the gray light of early morning was also far from pleasant. Everything was frozen. Very often the snow was deep outside of the tent. Every piece of clothing was damp and cold. As time wore on, we took off less and less when we went to bed, until the phrase “undressed for the night” might better have been changed to “dressed for the night.”
The evening of the fourth day out we reached Bulun Lake. Our caravan had been travelling very slowly, and we had decided to speed it up. Accordingly, we marched ahead and told the leaders not to stop until they caught up with us. We reached the lake just before dusk. There was but little water in it. Indeed, it consisted mainly of sand-bars with shallow channels between. At sunset the brown of the sand, set off by the shining winding strips of water, made the whole seem like some gigantic plaque of bronze inlaid with silver.
It was after dark when we reached the small settlement that goes by the name of Bulun. In the gloom we saw the shadowy shape of a square, half-ruined mud fort, with a few yourts clustered around it. After much chattering of shadowy figures that flitted through the dark, we got off, and were shown into one of the yourts to await the arrival of the caravan now well behind us.
Inside the yourt a Kirghiz family was gathered around the dung fire, which cast a glow rather than a light upon them. There were the man, his wife, a rather handsome, worn woman, and three brown, bright-eyed children, who sat as quiet as little mice. The air was so filled with smoke that it was almost impossible to keep our eyes open. This is the way these Kirghiz must spend fully twelve to fourteen hours a day through many of the winter months. There was neither room nor light in the yourt to do anything. I do not believe they think much, so like the North country farmer, I suppose they “just set.”
We and our men crowded in, completely filling the yourt. We were very grateful for the shelter from the wind, and the comparative warmth from the huddled humanity and the tiny fire. When the caravan arrived some hours later, we were sorry to have to go to our flimsy canvas tent.
Next morning we were up at daylight. The lake was cupped by snow-covered hills. Frost lay heavily on the brown sparse grass. Suddenly, through a gap in the mountain wall, a great level ray of sunlight fell, painting the low-lying clouds gold. A flock of ducks flew over, their wings flickering in the golden morning light.
While the cold-stiffened ponies were being caught and loaded, I noticed the old, white-bearded Beg in charge of the pony-train standing near a building around which swallows were flying. Unexpectedly he stretched out his hand and caught one as it flew by. He looked at it for a second and then threw it into the air, and away it sailed. Though these swallows swooped very close to me, it would have been impossible for me to have duplicated his feat. Unfortunately, as our ability to communicate with the natives was, to put it mildly, limited, I was unable to find out whether this was the first time he had done anything of the sort, or whether he was in the habit of doing it.
We marched to the Little Kara Kul, where, after talking with the natives, we decided to stop and hunt for a day. The village of Little Kara Kul consisted of a stone karal in which are three or four yourts. We were now in the land of the yak again, and the great shaggy beasts grunted and shuffled around our tent all night.
A yak is not an uncomfortable animal to ride, but patience is necessary. He goes very slowly though his gait is reasonably smooth, and he always gets there. Also, he goes over the most impossible country imaginable about as fast as he goes over level ground. He plods unconcernedly through snow up to his belly, or up a boulder-strewn slope of forty-five degrees. He moves over obstacles with the same deliberate unconcern with which I have seen a tank in the war negotiate a shell-hole. He is guided with a rope through his nostrils, and steers like a dray. He blows like a porpoise, keeps his mouth open a large part of the time, and lolls a long anteater-like tongue from side to side. I have seen a small icicle form from the saliva on the tip of his tongue, but could not see that it inconvenienced him at all. Once we rode our yaks into a valley where there was a herd of the same animals. The beast I was riding began to give curious throaty bellows. The old bulls of the herd at once waltzed up, holding their tails in the air like feather dusters. They made no attempt to attack, but played around us like ungainly puppies. There were dust wallows near by in which the great shaggy creatures would lie and roll.
[Illustration: KICHIK KARA KUL]
[Illustration: AN EARLY MORNING START AFTER OVIS POLI]
When we got up next morning it was bitterly cold. The sky was the monotonous gray of winter. Everything was white from a light snow. After a hurried breakfast, we started for the hunting-grounds, mounted on yaks. Their black woolly backs were incrusted with frost. On the first lake we passed a flock of geese settled, spiralling down from the sky with a musical honking. They stood in a row on a sand-bar like sentinels. The next lake was frozen except at one end. In the open water were myriads of ducks and geese. As we came up they rose into the air with a sound like ocean surf on a shingle beach.
It was typical Pamir country, sandy valleys dotted with tufts of dried grass, and snow-covered hills and mountains. For so barren a country there was a surprising amount of wild life. We saw snow-buntings, pigeons, vultures, and hawks. There were many tracks across the snow. I noticed much wolf sign, tracks of marmots, tracks like those of some small cat, and the trail where a little mouse had run hither and yon, dragging its tail in the snow, evidently in search of roots. We flushed four or five large hares which loped off with deceptive speed. To the latter Kermit and I, mindful of the old Southern custom, solemnly took off our caps in order that we might have luck with the poli.
As we were plodding along, Khalil jumped off his yak, calling out “goolja!” and pointing to a slope some 600 yards away. Along it were running two small poli rams, with horns about twenty inches long. They were too small to shoot, but it gave us a thrill to see the ovis poli in the flesh for the first time. Though they had seen us they seemed but little frightened, and, cantering gently up the slope, disappeared over the crest. They were very handsome with their gray backs and white chests and legs.
Shortly after this we separated, Kermit going to the left and I to the right. Only a few moments after I left him I saw some animals among the rocks about 700 yards away. After studying them with the field-glasses, I found them to be six female poli with four young. Our first care was for the males, so we left them undisturbed, and hunted up a nullah to one side. We found nothing and worked our way back in the hope that some male poli had joined the females. None had, and, as we wished to hunt the country beyond, we walked toward them over a great snow-bank. They soon saw us and cantered gracefully away over the mountain. We then plodded through the deep snow to the crest of a saddle. Again we saw females but no males. We tramped along the ridges without success until dusk began to fall. Two native hunters were with us. They seemed to tire quicker than either Rahima or I, and at intervals protested that the hunting should end for the day. Just as the sun was setting we caught a glimpse of Kermit, who was following the same tactics with the same lack of success. He and his shikaries showed up as tiny black dots against the white of the opposite mountain crest. Night fell as it falls in the mountains, suddenly. The shadows lengthened, and we found ourselves in the cold darkness. Far across the valley white mountains still blazed in a golden light. Ten minutes more and night closed like an extinguisher over all. Kermit and I met in the valley and rode to camp together. As we passed the lakes, we heard from the black the querulous quacking of the ducks who had settled there again.
On the whole we were not discouraged by the day’s work, for though we had seen no good heads, we had seen enough females and young to make us reasonably certain that there were some mature males near by. That evening, after talking with the natives in camp, we decided that the ravines we had hunted that day contained no mature rams and agreed to move to Subashi the next day. Accordingly, we sent a native forward that night to look the country over with a pair of our binoculars and to report when we arrived there.
We got to Subashi about one o’clock the following day. It was a valley with a little stream in the centre from which the land sloped up rather abruptly to surrounding hills. The ground was sandy, the vegetation sparse, but camels, sheep, and yaks seemed to be able to eke out a reasonable existence there. As it was evidently a place where there was no room for two separate guns, we decided to hunt together. Twice on our way up the valley we saw herds of female and young poli on the hillsides.
Soon we met the “jungli wallah” sent out the night before. He was in a state of great excitement. He told us that he had found a herd of eight goolja. We were delighted, and pushed forward cautiously to a point where the nullah forked. With our field-glasses we could just see them lying among some rocks toward the end of the right branch. The ravine, where the poli were, ended in some stiff-looking mountains. The left fork, slightly longer, ended near a divide beyond which lay the Russian Pamirs. Between the two branches was a high ridge of slide rock covered with snow.
Two stalks were possible, neither good; one over the top of the mountain on the extreme right, the other up the left nullah and over the dividing ridge. We chose the latter, for we were afraid we would not have time to complete the former. After riding a short way up the nullah, we left our horses and started climbing. As we approached the foot of the hill a very handsome red fox jumped up and trotted off. We wanted it for our collections, but did not shoot at it for fear of scaring off our poli. Somehow in hunting this very often happens. Smaller game always seems to show up during a stalk for big game.
[Illustration: A 53-INCH OVIS POLI]
The hill was a steep one. We zigzagged to and fro, floundering in snow and slipping on rock. The altitude was high, over 16,000 feet, and it cut our breath badly. At last, after an hour and a half of hard work, we reached the summit and peered over. To our sorrow we found that the poli, for some reason unknown to us, had moved and were slowly filing up a shoulder nearly 800 yards away. They were not really frightened, they were apprehensive. As it was now four-thirty, and there was no chance to try another stalk, we settled ourselves on the ridge for what Rahima called a “lookum see.” Through the field-glasses and telescopes we could see the sheep plainly. They were very handsome as they stepped delicately along, now stooping to nibble a tuft of grass, now halting to glance around and sniff the wind. Occasionally one would clamber on a rock and stand sentinel-like, his head thrown back until the massive spiral horns seemed to rest upon his shoulders. Standing thus they looked like the very spirit of the mountains. We studied them carefully. They were eight in number. Six had horns about forty-five inches in length. Two were splendid animals with horns measuring fifty or better.
A knife-like wind had risen and we were getting the full force of it. To make the climb we had stripped off our heavy coats. We were soaked with sweat and were soon chilled through and through. Every one was shivering. It was hard to hold the telescope steadily enough to see the game. Kermit and I agreed that if we had had to shoot then, we would have been as likely to hit the moon as a poli. In spite of this, we stayed until almost dark in order to mark down where our game stopped.
Through the dusk we plodded down the hill. When we reached the foot, we saw down the valley the red glow of some yak-dung camp-fires. This at once explained the behavior of the rams. Our caravan had moved up to where the valley forked, and were in plain sight of the heights where the poli had been. Cold, weary, and rather disconsolate, we made our way to camp, determined to start again early next morning.
All night long the wind blew down the valley, singing and whistling around our camp. Our light canvas tent bellied in the wind, and time and again we thought it would blow over. The cold from the ground came right through our bedding-rolls. Toward midnight it began to snow, and fine powdery flakes whirled in on us. I had my shoes in bed with me to prevent them freezing stiff.
At 4.30 A. M. we got up. The snow had stopped, but the whole country was sheeted in white. We pulled on with numb fingers, the few clothes we had taken off, gulped down some coffee, and started up the nullah where we had last seen the animals. Soon day began to break. A cold, steely-gray sky, heavy with unshed snows, arched over us. We dismounted and walked, partly from caution, partly because it was too cold to ride even clothed as we were.
About six o’clock we saw our game. Unfortunately, one of the men had turned a bend of the ravine too quickly and they had glimpsed him. Again they were not frightened but only apprehensive, and they made off slowly across the end of the valley and up the steep slope of the mountain. We lay still and watched. At last they breasted the crest, showed for a moment outlined against the sky, and one by one disappeared on the other side.
As soon as they were out of sight we started to follow them. One of the Kirghiz was sent back with our yaks, while Kermit, Rahima, Khalil, a local hunter, and I tramped ahead. It was about half past six. At first the way was only moderately steep. Then it changed and we had to climb. We floundered through snow-drifts waist-deep on slopes where it was difficult to believe snow could rest. We climbed over shoulders of rock where the loose shale under its white covering made every step a slip.
The altitude rapidly increased, and soon we were at least 17,000 feet high. We snatched gasping at every mouthful of thin air. When we stopped to rest I threw myself flat, though Kermit only seemed to need to lean on his stick. About eight we reached the crest. Our hopes were high, for we felt from the way the poli were travelling they might be just the other side. Very cautiously we worked our way up to some jutting rocks and looked over. We saw nothing. By this time the sun was shining. After looking around for ten or fifteen minutes, the shikaries decided that they had gone beyond the next range, and suggested that we start down the slope. Fortunately, at this moment Kermit picked them up with the field-glasses. They were on the opposite side of the valley, perhaps a mile away, lying on a patch of snow. Had we gone down the slope, they surely would have seen us and run off.
With the wind as it was, only one stalk was possible. This entailed about five miles as the crow flies, during which we crossed two mountains and numerous spurs. The stalk began at once. We struggled across snow-banks many feet deep; we zigzagged over rock drifts; we stumbled through corries where the snow concealed deep holes between boulders into which we fell. We climbed hand over hand up rock shoulders. At one place Kermit and I tobogganed down a steep snow slope and nearly started a snowslide.
The sun on the snow had made a heavy mist that hung curtain-wise across the valley. At last we reached a little ravine flanked by a steep ridge from which we felt we would get a shot at our game. Up the slope we toiled, looking about for the poli. It was a hard task, for we had to snatch moments when gaps occurred in the mist as it rolled by before the wind. We had sweated heavily and our clothes were drenched. Now the knife-like wind cut us to the bone. More than six hours had passed while we were climbing. In the beginning I had consistently brought up the rear of the column, but toward the end, one of the shikaries and the “jungli wallahs” dropped behind me.
After watching carefully for about twenty minutes, we made sure the rams were not where we had last seen them. As Rahima put it, we were “very mad-going,” for we had labored mightily on this stalk. Suddenly the fog began to thin, shredded away, and we saw the sheep opposite us in the Russian Pamirs. They were perhaps 700 yards distant, but, as we were in plain sight on a snow-drift, we lay quite still. It looked as if we were doomed to “the long day’s patience, belly down on frozen drift,” when a cloud drifted up, and under cover of the dim light we were able to crawl cautiously out of sight. We started at once for a point nearer our quarry. The clouds began to bank over us in real earnest.
When we had reached a position somewhere between three or four hundred yards from the rams, we realized that a snow-storm, sweeping up the valley, would be on us in a very few minutes, and make shooting impossible. It was now or never. I had won the first shot, so settling myself very carefully in the snow I fired at the animal which seemed to me to present the best target. Kermit immediately followed suit. At the crack of the rifles the rams were up and away, but we thought our shots had hit. Fortunately they did not know where we were, and headed back in our general direction toward the Chinese Pamirs.
Running as hard as we could over the snow, we came to a point which would give us a clear view of them when they passed. I had snatched off my gloves to get a better grip on the rifle, and now my hands were so cold that I could not feel the trigger. Suddenly the sheep came into view from behind a huge buttress of rock. They were in single file, the big rams leading. They were about 250 yards away, going at a plunging canter through the drifts. Their great spiral horns flared out magnificently, their heads were held high. Every line was clear cut against the white of the snow.
We began firing at once at the two leaders. First one and then the other staggered and lost his place in the line. Though hard hit, they pulled themselves together, joined the herd, and all disappeared over a near-by ridge. Clutching our rifles, we stumbled after them. When we reached the trail we found blood-stains. We put every ounce of strength we had into the chase, for these were the trophies we had travelled 12,000 miles to get. The going was very bad. Every few steps we floundered arm-pit deep in the snow. It was like the foot-tied race of a nightmare. Try as we would, we could not make time. Suddenly the wind rose, snow began to drift down, and the trail was blotted out in the swirling white of the storm. We could do no more and had to give up and make for camp.
Working our way down to the valley we found our yaks, so frosted with snow that they looked like animated birthday-cakes. The two native hunters with them had seen the rams cross the ridge and were confident they were mortally wounded. They felt sure we would find them next day if the storm did not obliterate their trails. This was but poor comfort, as a blizzard was then raging, and even if we were lucky enough to find the sheep the wolves would have destroyed the body skins. From the sportsman’s standpoint, of course, the great horns are the trophy, but for mounting in the museum the whole skin is necessary.
It was growing late. Thoroughly tired out we rode back through the storm to camp. The snow drifted in stinging particles against our faces. It was a moment when we fully appreciated the beards we had grown. Though far from ornamental they were a great protection. When we got to our tent they were stiff and heavy with snow and ice. After as hot a supper as we could get, we rolled up in our bedding. Storm or shine, we made up our minds to be off early next morning to the point where we had last seen our poli.
In the gray dawn we were up again. The storm had blown over during the night. Stars were glittering coldly over the white mountains. On our grunting yaks we plodded up the valley to the scene of yesterday’s stalk. When we arrived the sun was just rising. Its rays, as they came through the mountain clefts, struck the snow slantwise and gave it a queer, unreal, coppery glow. The wind had blown much of last night’s fall clear of the mountain slope in front of us. There we could see fragments of the poli trail which led up and over the crest.
The one thing to do was to follow the trail. Here we struck an unexpected snag. Two of the three Kirghiz with us said that the slope ahead was too dangerous to climb, because we would almost certainly be caught in a snowslide. As these men had had a hard time the previous day, we felt that in this case their wish was father to their thought. Though the mountain looked steep and high, we insisted that the climb could be made.
Rahima Loon was really tired, so we left him with the yaks and began climbing. Our party consisted of Kermit, myself, Khalil, and three jungli wallahs, one of whom was as game as a bantam, while the other two were very sad. For four hours we plodded in zigzags up through the snow. It was back-breaking work. The trail had to be broken through drifts four to eight feet deep. The altitude was high, the air thin, and when at last we panted to the top we looked as if we had been in a Turkish bath.
On the other side of the ridge stretched a wide valley. It was seamed with rocky spurs from the surrounding mountains. The snow lay thick and undisturbed, for this side was sheltered from the wind which had swept the slope up which we had climbed. We could see no tracks, though we searched the country with our field-glasses for a long while. The animals might be lying dead behind any one of a thousand rocky shoulders, or be covered with snow.
The wind blew colder and colder. Even the Kirghiz huddled shivering in the lee of some rocks. Apparently the poli were hopelessly lost. Of the party, all shared our view but the cheerful “jungli wallah.” He said he thought he stood a chance of finding them by circling back and up the valley into which we were looking. By so doing he could look up the ravines that ran down from the mountains. He said also that he hoped to mark them by wolf-tracks.
As there seemed little else to do we told him to go ahead, though we had but little faith in the result. Tramping down the slope again we reached camp in the late afternoon, very downhearted.
The “jungli wallah” followed out his plan. He went up the other valley, and, with some field-glasses we had lent him, studied the country. He saw seven wolves near the head of a small ravine and knew at once that one of our rams lay there. Going there he found not one, but two. The sheep had lain down close together after passing the ridge, and had died during the night. They were the two leaders and had fine heads. The horns of one measured fifty-one and a half inches, and the other forty-nine and a half. He brought them into camp late in the evening. We were delighted. They were our first poli and had good heads.
Though the wolves had served us well by making it possible for us to find our game, they had, as we feared, completely destroyed the body skins which made the rams of little value for exhibition purposes in the museum.
We had, of course, to get mountable specimens not only of adult males but of females and young males. If, however, we were not fortunate enough to get adult males with large heads, these big heads could be mounted on body skins of animals who were adult but whose horns were smaller.
There seemed to be no more poli in this nullah, so we decided to move our camp. We marched during the morning over the desolate plain which stretches south from the Little Kara Kul. To east of us towered Mustagh Ata in all the majesty of his 24,000 feet. Before us rose occasional flocks of gray snow-birds that flitted away like dead leaves before a November wind.
About noon we came to the village of Kara Su. Like the other Pamir villages which figure in bold type on the maps, it consists of four or five yourts. It lies at the foot of the valley of that name which leads, after four or five miles, over a low pass into the Russian Pamirs. Here the news we heard from the natives made us feel that this would be a good place to hunt. Moreover, the Russian Pamirs where we decided the poli would be were so close at hand that we were able to camp in the village. This had the real advantage of giving us a yourt to live in, which far outstrips a six-by-nine canvas tent as a winter residence in the Pamirs.
The inhabitants of Kara Su were very friendly. They came and squatted around our fire and nodded and smiled at us. We particularly liked one small boy. He was clothed in a single cotton wrapper-like garment. Just what its function was we could not decide. It certainly was not ornamental, for if dropped among the refuse by the yourt it could have been distinguished only with difficulty. It could not have been worn for warmth, as it was of the flimsiest material. Nor was it prescribed by modesty, for when standing by the fire the little fellow generally wound it around his neck and toasted his bare brown body before the coals. He was very friendly and cheerful, and much delighted by an empty tobacco tin and some colored buttons that we gave him.
As soon as we had made up our minds to camp at Kara Su, we left word for the caravan to stop at the yourts, and we started for the hunting-grounds. Our way up the valley of the Kara Su led through heavy sand and snow-drifts. The going was so bad and the altitude so high that the ponies we were riding were thoroughly blown, and we longed for yaks. At the end of about two hours we came to the pass, a low, sandy, wind-swept ridge. Beyond stretched rolling hills separated by barren valleys.
Almost immediately after we crossed the divide, one of the Kirghiz made out a herd of poli feeding on the dry grass-tufts in one of the bottoms. A short easy stalk brought us to a point above them on the hillside.
Something had alarmed them, and they were making off at a decorous canter across the valley. The herd was composed of young males and females. We wanted one or more of each for the museum so we fired, killing one and hitting two others. The herd broke into a gallop and disappeared. We trotted across the valley, and found that the animal we had killed was a young male. Leaving Khalil to skin him we started on the trail of the wounded. About a quarter of a mile farther we came to where another had broken off from the herd, and was lying down in a small ravine. I followed this animal, and Kermit went off on the remaining spoor.
When I got up to where the game was, I found it to be an adult female. Rahima was with me and together we skinned it. Here the balance of the party caught up with us, bringing the skin of the young male and the ponies. The first Kirghiz to arrive I sent off after Kermit with one of the horses. By the time we had finished it was dark and there was no sign of Kermit. I was worried, because to be benighted on the Pamirs at this time of year, in the intense cold, with the bitter storms that sweep them, is a very serious matter. The men were tired and far more philosophical as a result. “Kermit Sahib get back to camp, God give it,” was their view of the situation. I explained that this placid attitude would not do, and organized search-parties. Taking our two shikaries with me, I sent out the Kirghiz who knew the country by themselves. In this latter disposition I made a mistake, for I found later that after letting a couple of whoops and getting no answer, they decided that their duty was done and returned to camp. The two shikaries and I rode up to the crest of the mountain and along it. Every few minutes we called but got no response. At last we found a trail through the snow leading back toward camp. We judged this was Kermit’s and abandoned our search.
Arriving in camp at eight-thirty we found that Kermit had come in an hour earlier. It looked like waste effort, but in early winter in the Pamirs it does not pay to take a chance.
Next morning at three o’clock we were up and off again. Both of us were shivering cold in spite of wearing nearly everything we had. I felt much like the man in “The Hunting of the Snark,” who wore seven coats and three pair of boots. We had changed our ponies for yaks, which made us much more comfortable. Work such as we had had the day before would have been play to a yak.
Before dawn we were on the hunting-grounds and had selected a point of vantage. There we waited huddled up in our coats, while black turned to gray, gray to pink, and the first rays of sunlight struck across the hills. Through our glasses we picked up herds of females in several places, but no adult males. Two or three times we thought we saw rams, but each time a close scrutiny proved that we had been mistaken. We changed our position a half a dozen times without result. Once we did see two small rams trotting over a hill-crest, but though we followed them we could not find where they went.
At last about noon we made out in a valley a large herd of females, and near them four rams. After studying the latter our men said they had heads measuring forty inches or better. We could see that they were adults. They were strolling leisurely along the slope toward the head of a ravine. As usual the wind was wrong, and we had to make a long détour to head them off. By the time we had done so, and reached the point where we had planned to intercept them, they had disappeared. Though we looked as carefully as we could, we could find no sign of them. Also the snow was too much marked with trails, old and new, to help us. We held a council of war and decided that the sheep must have gone up the ravine.
We made another détour, and climbed the ridge again. Our judgment proved correct, for here Khalil picked up the sheep lying among some rocks still farther toward the head of the valley. Again we climbed through the snow and rock for a mile or so. Crossing the ridge, we worked down a little rocky shoulder just above where we believed the poli were lying. We could not see them and thought they had moved again. We started down the ridge. Suddenly one of the native Kirghiz, who was with Kermit on the left, called out that he saw them.
There was no time to lose for the sheep had seen us and were running. Kermit started shooting at once and, as I came running up, dropped one. A few seconds later I hit another who rolled down the steep slope like an enormous rabbit. We knocked over a third, but he picked himself up again and went off.
We scrambled down the steep hillside, and found to our disappointment that the horns of Kermit’s animal were just short of forty inches, and mine still smaller. They were, however, adults in body, and the skins could be used by the museum for mounting the two large heads.
Kermit went with Khalil to look for the trail of the wounded ram. Rahima and I started to measure and skin the two dead animals. While we were doing so a Kirghiz man, a little Kirghiz boy, and a very large yellow dog came up and joined us. Forgetting that they were Mohammedans, and that the meat was unclean because the animals had not been “hallaled” before death, I told them they could have some. Here in the back mountains where food is scarce, religious precepts were not so strict. They solemnly cut the throats of the long-dead carcass and sawed off great chunks of meat, which they carried away.
By the time we were well started on our work, the yaks came plodding solemnly over the hillside, led by the man with whom we had left them. Many hands proverbially make light work. With his help we had the skins off and the trophies slung over the yaks, when Kermit and Khalil came back to say that the blood-trail of the wounded ram had been lost in a corrie of rocks.
The sky had become cloudy and overcast. The forbidding gray of an approaching snow-storm arched over us. The natives had been hurrying as rapidly as they could, casting apprehensive glances at the gathering clouds. We mounted and started for camp.
A short distance up the valley a debate took place between the two Kirghiz. One wished to go back the way we came. The other wanted to take a short cut over a mountain and try to get to camp before the storm broke. The latter triumphed and we started to zigzag up a steep slope. Every hundred yards the snow became deeper, until when we reached the top it was up to the bellies of the yaks. At just this moment the storm broke on us like a blizzard on the Montana plains.
The wind shrieked by with such force that we could lean against it. The snow whirled down in blinding clouds. It penetrated every crack and cranny of our clothes. I could just make out Kermit’s yak a few yards in front of me. One of the Kirghiz dismounted and stumbled ahead on foot. Even these natives lost their bearings. We plunged through banks of snow and over concealed boulders. The great yaks, white-crusted until they looked like moving snow-drifts, plodded sturdily along. They crossed obstacles with the even calm of caterpillar-tractors. Once we saw huddled under the lee of a rock some ramchukor, the snow drifting in eddies around them. At last after an hour’s work, we suddenly found ourselves on the brink of a steep slope. The Kirghiz recognized it. Down it we slipped and slid to the comparative shelter of the valley. In another hour we were back at our yourt.
We had our sportsman’s trophies, the two big heads. We had our group of poli for the museum. The essential part of our work with the poli was done. We stood around the small fire in the yourt, the melting ice and snow dripping from our beards and clothes. Rahima, who had a healthy respect for winter in the Pamirs and passes of the Himalayas, summed up his views by saying:
“All right, good morning, going!”
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