It was interesting to notice how quickly all our little wild neighbors learned to know that the sound produced by banging on a tin plate meant dough-god and other good things at our camp, and as they came rustling among the grasses or fluttering from bush and trees they showed more fear of each other than they did of Pete and me. When the myriads of bright stars would twinkle in the blue black sky or the great round-faced moon climb over the mountain tops to see what was doing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then the big pack-rats, with squirrel-like tails, would troop out from their secret caves and invade the camp. In the gray dawn, while sleeping in a tent, I often awakened to hear something scamper up its steep side and then laughed to see the shadow of a comical little body toboggan down the canvas. Our pocket-knives, compasses and all other small objects were never safe unless securely packed away out of reach of these nocturnal marauders. Our conversations around the camp fire evenings were highly interesting too, for Big Pete was a fluent talker with a wealth of stories of the Great West at his tongue’s end. Indeed, the story of his family and their migration west was one that fascinated me. His father had been a trapper in the old days; he had done his share of roaming the mountains, prospecting and making his strikes, small and large, fighting Indians and living the strenuous life of the border pioneer. He had found the woman he afterward married unconscious under an overturned wagon of an emigrant train that had been raided by the Indians, and after nursing her back to health in his mining shack, had married her. With money he had worked from the “diggin’s” he had acquired, by grants from the government, the beautiful and expansive mountain park where he had planned to develop a ranch. He never went very far with his project, however, for a raiding party of Indians caught him alone in the mountains and his wife found his body pinned to the ground with arrows. The shock of his tragedy killed Big Pete’s mother soon after, and the young Peter Darlinkel, then three years old, went to a nearby settlement to be brought up by an uncle and a squaw aunt. Pete became prospector, scout, trapper and hunter, using this beautiful park that became his as a result of the passing of his father, as a private game preserve, so to speak. That is, it was private except for the intrusion of the Wild Hunter and his black wolf pack. In a fragmentary way Big Pete told me this story and other interesting tales of this wild western country, but mostly our conversation turned to this old man of the mountains who was such a mystery to everyone, even to Big Pete, but who, despite the lugubrious reputation, had proved a kindly gentleman and a good friend to me.