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Dallas Morgan and the Lion

Dallas Morgan I and the Lion WE WERE IN ELK CAMP WITH NIGHT COMING ON and the young bull of the afternoon was quartered and hung in the quakers behind the tent. Supper was over and we were taking our ease by the fire, full of Joe's biscuits and fresh elk liver and gravy. Off yonder, Solomon Creek was brawling through its deep canyon under the Wyoming line. The temperature was falling again and there was the smell of more snow in the air, but it was a snug enough camp with plenty of straw under the tent and firewood put by. There was the sound of a pickup on the road, laboring along in all-wheel drive. It stopped, a door closed quietly, and a Colorado conservation officer stepped into the firelight. Our old friend Dallas Morgan looked real spiffy in his Class A uniform. The glass of fashion and the mold of form, as they say. We told him so, apologizing for our whiskers and dirty pants. Dallas cussed mildly at that and helped himself to the coffee and biscuits. He squatted Indian-fashion beside the fire, a compact man in 15 Dallas Morgan and the Lion Wi WEllE IN Uteside the fi'e, a COmp.lCI man in " Dallas Morgan and the Lion Wi WEllE IN Uteside the fi'e, a COmp.lCI man in " 16 JOHN MADSON his early sixties and nearing retirement from the Department. Unlike many old riders he was not saddle-bowed nor stiffened by old hurts, and moved easily and lightly. His face was deeply lined and cured by a lifetime of sun and wind, but it was the eyes that caught and held attention-flat, hard eyes that always seemed to see beyond what they were looking at. We sat there in the circle of light-the night trying to get in but held at bay by the fire-and the talk turned, as it always does, to other times and other hunts. Someone asked Dallas how many elk he had killed. "Not many. Some. Most of my real huntin', the trail huntin', has been for lions." "How many lions, then?" "Seventy-six. I kept track because most of them were taken in control work, mostly in the old days." "That's a bunch of mountain lions," someone said. "Kill all of 'em in the chickenhouse?" "There, and down in the catnip patch," Dallas grinned. "All except one, mebbee." We waited. Dallas paused, looking into the fire and remembering , and then told about it. You know that I come up from west Texas in '27, and that fall my brother Frank and I went fur-trapping over by Gunnison. Camped out all that winter and made us $4,400, and in those days that would buy a mess of groceries. Well, that got me started, and a few years later I went to work for the old Bureau of Biological Survey as a government hunter. I worked for the government off and on for about fifteen years, mostly trapping bears and coyotes when I started out. But even then I was hunting some lions on my own, and usually had a good dog or two. Along in the middle 1930s reports started comin' in to my boss in Grand Junction about a big old tom lion that was giving stockmen some trouble. This lion would leave the Utah border country every spring and head up east to the Grand Mesa. He'd follow the deer herd up out of winter range right back to the top 16 JOHN MADSON his early sixties and nearing retirement from the Department. Unlike many old riders he was not saddle-bowed nor stiffened by old hurts, and moved easily and lightly. His face was deeply lined and cured by a lifetime of sun and wind, but it was the eyes that caught and held attention-flat, hard eyes that always seemed to see beyond what they were looking at. We sat there in the circle of light-the night trying to get in but held at bay by the fire-and the talk turned, as it always does, to other times and other hunts. Someone asked Dallas how many elk he had killed. "Not many. Some. Most of my real huntin', the trail huntin', has been for lions." IIHow many lions, then?" "Seventy-six. I kept track because most of them were taken in control work, mostly in the old days." "That's a...