Face to Face With The Beast

The trueish story of a former President and his encounter with an unknown bipedal creature

The servants had built a fire on the back porch at Campobello

Campobello is an ocean-side vacation property used by the Roosevelt family located exactly on the Maine/New Brunswick border. It is now a National Park, jointly administered by the US and Canadian governments

. We sat around, friends and family all, enjoying the warmth of the flame on a cool summer evening. Prohibitionists notwithstanding, a few of us also enjoyed the warmth of some whiskey, but I’ll thank you to keep that under your hat. I can’t say I recall what we spoke of, but at one point, well after the sun had set, young Franklin asked about my time ranching in Dakota Territory. Now that I think of it, I recall his good friend Herb Hoover had joined us that week. Herb and Frank were fast friends. It’s a shame that all fell apart. He may be family but it was Franklin who stabbed Herbert in the back. He built his career off destroying Hoover’s reputation. But I digress…

“Uncle Teddy,” he began, unsure how to phrase his question without offending. That was Franklin, always looking to avoid causing offense. “Even now, the Dakotas are a wild place. Back then, they weren’t even states yet.”

“True,” I answered, hoping he’d get to the point, “the Chimney Butte Ranch was a hundred miles from anywhere. Still is.”

“I guess what I want to know is, weren’t you ever scared out there? I mean, so much can go wrong and there’s no help.”

“Mostly no,” I answered. “I had an entire ranch of competent people who knew their way around a steer and knew their way around the land. They were great teachers. After all, I was paying them!”

We all laughed and I took another sip of a mint julip. As I mentioned above, the drink wasn’t mine. It just happened to be sitting there, right next to me, and as I was about to regale a story, I thought it appropriate to wet my throat. Someone motioned for the servants to add a clump of dried lemon grass to the fire to drive away the incessant mosquitoes, and that gave me time to compose my thoughts.

“There was one time, Frank,” I continued, “where I was utterly terrified – and it was not when I got into a shootout with cattle-rustling bandits. I learned fear the likes of which no man should ever feel. I’ve braved wild animals, untamed land, men with fists, men with guns, even war… …but nothing as horrifying as what I experienced out in the Dakotas.”
__________

As it turns out, the story didn’t happen at the Chimney Butte Ranch at all, but rather near the other ranch I owned, the Elkhorn Ranch. Where Chimney Butte is on the Little Missouri, the Elkhorn sits in the west of the west, on the far side of Dakota, almost in Montana. A rancher from Elkhorn and I had gone into Montana Territory to do some trapping.

I loved it out there at Elkhorn with the cowboys. They mocked me when I arrived, and called me “four eyes,” but over time they saw that I wasn’t all-show, no-go and they came to respect me. Those cowboys taught me to rope and hunt and ride western style – even if I never was anything special on the back of a horse. I could ride but not like them. They respected me at least partly because I respected them. As I watched them, I observed that a cowboy has "few of the emasculated, milk-and-water moralities admired by the pseudo-philanthropists; but he does possess, to a very high degree, the stern, manly qualities that are invaluable to a nation."

We hunted and dressed everything from prairie chicken, to ducks, sage hens, antelope, rabbit, elk, and who knows what else. When they saw I was willing to get elbow deep in an animal carcass to cut out the meat, suddenly they didn’t feel the need to call me “four eyes” anymore. Although they never did come to appreciate me keeping a copy of Anna Karenina in my saddlebags and reading it by the fire. Well, you were asking about fear. I once shot a 9-foot-tall grizzly bear right through the brain and wasn’t afraid. But that trip to Montana Territory trapping beaver? I’ll never forget it.

We had trapped our way all the way out to the Wisdom River. The closest thing to civilization was probably a little village named Butte, and that was probably one hundred miles to the northeast. I was with a man named Bauman. German fella. He was a sensible man, he was German after all, and a hell of a trapper.

We were up near the head of the Wisdom and looking to move on. The local Medicine Man, I think he may have been Nez Pierce tribe, advised us not to go up the right fork. There was beaver a-plenty up there, they told us, but a man had gone up there years before and been killed. Some sort of wild creature had killed him and eaten on his remains. He was found by some miners, who’d passed by his camp the day before his demise. Then the next day he was killed and half eaten. Well, the Indians found the body. Death is part of life for them, yet even for them it was bad. Bad enough that they didn’t go up into that valley anymore.

Well, Bauman and I weren’t going to be scared off by some wild Medicine Man, especially when the Indians admitted that there was beaver to be found along the creek. We packed up and rode our horses to the base of the pass, where we hobbled them in a meadow that offered ample grazing. From there, packs on our backs, we hiked up the mountain pass to this new territory.

We probably hiked ten or so miles up the pass and eventually found a clearing where we made camp. Well, the Indians were right about one thing, we saw all kinds of tracks, spoor, you name it. There was game here, alright. We found a good spot for camp, dropped our packs and set to work making a shelter.

The spot we chose featured a tree that split into a Y about five feet off the ground. Next, we found a log about fifteen feet long that had fallen in some long-forgotten storm. We wedged one end in the ground and the other end in the Y, and of course, the log snapped. I kicked it and told it exactly what a no-good son of a bitch it was. But the log was already dragged to camp and stripped of branches, so we wedged in the ten-foot section and shelter would just be smaller. After that we just started gathering sticks. Long, thin, straight sticks were desirable. We needed them anywhere from two to eight feet long. We leaned each stick against the ten-foot log. The longer sticks went up near the Y shaped tree, and the shorter ones fit closer to where the ten-foot log was wedged into the ground. They made the framework of a triangular shaped wall. Once the framework was in place, we started cutting down pine boughs and layering them like shingles on the wall. They’d keep the rain out and the warmth in. Once we had a thick layer of boughs, we topped it all off with another thick layer of pine needles we gathered from the duff around camp. We tossed a few more sticks on top of it all to hold everything in place and now we had a shelter

which would last for weeks and stand up to all but the fiercest storms.

Days are long in the summer in those parts, and a shelter doesn’t take long to build when two people are at work, so we still had a couple hours left to explore before dark. We set off upstream and the terrain swiftly got rugged. I’ve seen rugged and make no mistake, this was rugged. The land itself grew steep as we left the foothills and entered the mountains proper. This was the kind of walking which made a man appreciate resting by the fire with his feet up at the end of the day. Dense thickets of pine, spruce, fir, and other evergreens alternated with small meadows. Centuries of downed trees and other detritus had accumulated on the forest floor, making each step treacherous. Where the light peeked through to the forest floor, ferns grew with leaves the size of dinner plates. A man looking to harvest timber could make a fortune in these woods if only he could find a way to get it back to civilization. We set a few traps as we picked our way through the forest, but with limited time we couldn’t set them all.

Well, we got back to camp around dusk only to find that some animal had paid us a visit. It had opened our packs and scattered our gear everywhere. Worse, it had destroyed the debris hut we’d built. It left footprints behind but we didn’t pay any attention to them. We needed to collect our gear, rebuild our hut, and make a fire, and all with minimal daylight left.

It was well after dark before we’d completed these tasks and I set about making supper. While I tended to grub, Bauman grabbed a log from the fire and used it as a torch, just now examining the tracks. Well, the log went out and he grabbed another, following them where they left camp. Eventually the smell of pork and beans reached him, and he returned, put the log back into the fire and gazed at the flames. After a few minutes’ contemplation, he announced, “you know, Theodore, that animal which destroyed our camp walked on two legs.”

Well, I laughed, but he insisted. The meal took priority. Using our neckerchiefs, we wiped the dirt off the scattered plates and stuffed ourselves with beans. The lumps of fat and brown sugar had soaked in and added a hearty flavor to the gritty beans. Without them, I don’t know how cowboys could stand eating the stuff. Hopefully we'd have meat from the traps soon and not have to eat any more of this stuff.

After dinner Bauman insisted that we grab a couple logs to use as torches, and he showed me the tracks. When I saw them, I had to admit that they very well could have been made by something walking on two paws or feet. However, it was just too dark to really tell.

We returned to the shelter, wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and gazed up at the overwhelming stars which filled the vast Montana sky. We talked of the footprints and wondered if a human could have made them. Maybe we had angered the Medicine Man? Regardless, we fell asleep before we could conclude anything.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard a noise. Not the usual sounds of the woods at night. By the way, the forest is not a quiet place after dark. That’s when everything comes alive. Still, there’s a certain rhythm to the sounds of the night. You grow accustomed to the song of the insects, the occasional whooshing of an owl passing overhead, the quick rush of a bat, so quick it’s gone before you notice, and of course, the howling of the wolfpack somewhere in the distance. Your mind gets used to this and it doesn’t raise an alarm.

This sound, however, seemed out of place. It also seemed close. VERY close. I opened my eyes to look but before I could focus my nose was overwhelmed. A powerful musky scent overpowered the usual camp scents of pine, ashes, leftover beans, and flatulence. My eyes watered and my nose ran from the reek. I tried to breathe through my mouth yet still gagged. As I sat up, I observed an enormous dark silhouette just outside the entrance to the hut. In all my life I have never been gripped by such raw fear. Somehow, I grabbed my rifle and fired. The beast was mere feet away, yet between the tears in my eyes, the gagging from the stench, and the overwhelming fear, I knew I had missed the shot. As the ringing in my ears subsided, I could hear the creature crashing through the brush in the forest.

Well, we spent the rest of the night huddling around the fire. We took turns trying to sleep but neither of us succeeded. Fortunately, dawn arrived and the visitor did not return. We set to work checking traps and setting the rest of our line. Neither of us said anything out loud about the previous night, but we stayed together all day. That made setting the lines take longer, but encounter had unnerved us. Neither of us felt comfortable alone. The air lay heavy in the forest, as the breeze couldn’t fight its way through the trees. The usual forest smells seemed particularly dense in my nose. And the sounds all ceased. To some extent, this is normal in the daytime, but even the gurgling of the creek seemed somehow distant. The air lay still; there was no cool sensation on your cheek from its motion. Even the dragonflies didn’t disturb the midday stillness. We worked in silence. None of the traps we’d set the previous night contained any game. We re-positioned them and set out the rest along the creek and along the game trails, making careful notes of each trap’s location. We didn’t want to lose any traps – they couldn’t be replaced. Likewise, we didn’t want to leave one behind and have an animal get caught in it and die. We had more respect for the animals than that. Once the string was set, we made our way back to camp with several hours to relax or make improvements to our base of operations.

As we approached camp, we immediately noticed the visitor had returned. Once again, our packs were ripped open. If anything, there seemed to be even more malice to the act than the first time. The harsh musky odor still lingered in camp. The contents and our bedding were thrown everywhere, and again, our shelter had been destroyed. The metal diner plates had been bent in half. My cup, which I’d spent two full days whittling the previous year, was broken. I found half of it up a tree. The visitor utterly ruined Bauman’s spare under-britches. Parts of them were scattered throughout camp, in trees, and even in the creek. We eventually located my wool blanket in a thicket of poison ivy, torn. The sack of beans had been ripped open and spilled out on the ground. We never found the ladle.

The creature had departed via the creek and left clearly defined tracks in the soft mud of the creek bed. Now that I saw them in the light of day, there was no argument. Bauman was right. This animal walked on two legs.

"He's a big bastard, too, I'll give you that," I told Bauman. "I could fit my whole boot inside this print with room on all sides. And him barefoot."

"I ain't never seen the likes of it, have you?"

"I cannot say that I have."

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"I don't know."

"Well," he sighed, "I suppose we'd best clean up camp again." And he set to work. Bauman was always a practical man. He was, after all, German.

Wherever you find poison ivy, you almost always also find jewelweed. I’d learned from a Lakota Sioux back in Dakota how jewelweed counteracts the rash that poison ivy causes. For my top priority, I had a bit of lye soap (also ripped open) and mixed it with the jewelweed and set about washing my blanket. Otherwise, it’d be a cold night and an itchy trip. Bauman set about gathering our belongings. We didn’t bother recreating the shelter. Instead, we gathered several days’ supply of firewood and built the fire bright and large. We spent the night by the fire, one of us trying to sleep while the other stayed awake and alert.

Around midnight, it came. We heard the forest rustling and the branches crackling. Then we smelled that hideous musky scent. Then we saw the silhouette, a giant shape of blackness on the far side of the creek. When the flames flickered just right, we saw its eye-shine reflect back at us. Where deer’s eyes reflect white at night and spiders’ eyes are yellow-green, and cougars’ eyes are yellow, these eyes reflected purple – majestic and yet ominous and bizarre. Neither Bauman nor I had ever heard of any animal having purple eye-shine at night. It crouched down on the hillside and just watched. My mouth went dry just knowing it was there. I could see it staring at me from across the stream. I couldn't help but stare back. In the darkness it was hard to tell where the giant black silhouette ended and the forest began. The eyes, however... the eyes never left us. I was face to face with the beast, with a mere trickle of water and a scant few strides of forest between us. Occasionally, we’d hear leaves rustling as it moved. Usually, this was accompanied by an impossibly deep, moan. No human could ever sing this low. I don’t even think a tuba could play such a subterranean pitch. I could barely hear it, yet it was so loud it bounced and echoed across the mountains. My chest vibrated from its resonance, despite the creature being all the way on the other side of the creek. Yet it did not approach the fire. Fortunately, after an hour of surveillance it left, and the rest of the night passed without incident.

“You know,” Bauman said after one guttural roar, “I think I’ve seen enough. In the morning, let’s pack up and get out of here.”

I didn’t require any persuasion. I can still smell that awful musk today. Not only that, but despite all the signs of game, our traps had yielded nothing. We had no fur to reward our efforts. It was time to trap somewhere else.
That morning, we loaded all the supplies into our packs and prepared to break camp. However, before we could leave, we needed to collect the traps. We walked the line, picking up one trap after another, gradually working our way back to camp. As before, each trap was empty.

“Theodore,” Bauman asked about halfway through, “don't look, but I get the feeling like we’re being followed.”

“Me too,” I answered. “I hadn’t said anything because we’re both already on edge.”

"Keep your rifle ready."

"Always."

We never saw anything but the unnatural silence of the previous day seemed to follow us. Occasionally we heard the rustle of leaves of snap of a twig; sounds which didn’t belong. We reached camp with three traps remaining. The upstream traps had all been gathered and now had just these couple left. I agreed to fetch them by myself while Bauman loaded the traps into our packs. That way we’d get out of this godforsaken place just a little sooner.

It was maybe two miles or so to the far trap. I’d pick it up and grab the others on the way back. Yet finally, luck had turned! There in the trap was a fat beaver! I wished Bauman was there to help, but I had to handle this myself. The trap had become dislodged and lay partially submerged thanks to the beaver’s struggle. That meant I couldn’t dispatch the animal with a club to the head. Most trappers preferred this method as it meant death for the animal was instantaneous and seemed to be painless. But with everything underwater I needed to sharpen a stick and stab the beaver to harvest it. Then I had to haul everything out of the water, remove the trap, skin the beaver, dress the fur, and pack everything up.

The second trap yielded a second beaver. I was able to club this one on land. Still, the sun had moved deep into the afternoon sky. The last trap yielded a third fur, which took yet more time. Three pelts wasn't a profitable trip, but at least we had something to show for our efforts.

The gloomy stillness of the midday forest still hung like an omnipresent cloud as I approached the camp. Yet the small success combined with the fact that we were leaving had lifted my spirits. Even if the trip was still a bizarre failure, at least we had a couple of furs for our effort.

“We got some!” I called to Bauman as I approached the camp.

There was no response. It was almost twilight and the embers glowed in the fire ring. Little tongues of gray smoke curled up into the evening. As I approached, I saw Bauman laying down, staring into the fire.

“Hey! The bottom 3 traps were full!”

No answer. The packs lay against a tree, neatly packed and ready to go. He must have dozed off while waiting for me.

“Bauman, wake up! Let’s get a move on!”

As I leaned over to shake him, I noticed his head lay at an odd angle. Bauman was dead, his neck broken. As I looked closer, I noticed four deep gashes in his throat. Tooth marks. The fangs of the beast which had haunted and hunted us these past two days. Large footprints, deeply embedded in the soft earth told the remainder of the story. Bauman had finished packing and sat down to watch the fire while waiting for me. The creature crept up from behind and did its vile deed. It must have been watching from the forest, waiting for one of us to make a mistake. It crept up, still on two legs, and poor Bauman never knew a thing.

Well, I admit I was scared out of my mind. A human couldn’t make bites like this. No other animal walked on its hind legs. Was it a demon? A goblin-beast? Someone or something possessed by The Devil? I didn’t wait to find out. I grabbed my rifle and fled. I abandoned everything else; the furs, the packs, the grub, Bauman’s rifle, and even, I’m ashamed to say, Bauman’s body. I left it all where it lay and half ran down the mountainside. I didn’t think. I just fled through the darkness in blind fear. I didn’t stop until I reached the meadow with the two horses. It was well past dark, but I didn’t stop. I saddled up the horses and rode through the night, taking direction via their horse-sense and the few stars peeking through the clouds.

The loss of Bauman ended the entire trapping expedition. From there it was a somber, yet uneventful ride back to Dakota Territory and the Elkhorn Ranch. When I told my story, the gringos started to laugh and make light of it. But the Indians? The Indians didn’t say a word. Their silence betrayed their fear just in hearing the story. It spread to the gringo cowboys and the jokes ceased.

A few weeks later something odd happened at the ranch. We started finding very unusual scat around the property, and occasionally near the house. The cowboys had seen it all over the years, but nothing like this. This scat didn’t have grass in it like a grazing animal. And it wasn’t runny and filled with hair like a meat eater. It was solid like a human’s excretions. Yet these were over a foot long, and as big around as one of these new cans of soup you could get at a well-stocked dry-goods store. No human could produce something this big – it’d rip the insides apart. And no animal any of us had heard of – and these cowboys spend their lives outside with these animals – could make anything like it. The only thing big enough might be a bear and anyone who's ever seen bear scat knows it looks nothing like this. I can’t prove it, but I know exactly what made it. So did the Indians.

And that, Frank, is the one and only time I was truly afraid in my time out west. Now let's speak of something else.



AUTHORS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. The Roosevelt Family did keep a summer house at Campobello. I made no attempt to capture Roosevelt's personality. However, he did go to his grave firmly believing in his heart of hearts that a second species of primate roamed the wild lands of North America. He wrote about it in three of his books about his life. He didn't hire ghost writers, either. They were written by hand, by Theodore himself.

I have no idea if both President Roosevelt's ever vacationed together at Campobello. In truth, given their ages, their professions, and the events of the time, I suspect this evening around the campfire would be implausible at best. Fortunately, as a writer of fiction, I can cast that aside for the sake of the story. Sure, any member of the Roosevelt family could have asked the question, but it's somehow more interesting when it's FDR. I am also unaware of anyone shortening Franklin to Frank, but if anyone were brash enough to do so, it'd be his crazy uncle Theodore. In truth, they were fifth cousins. Yet they were close enough that Theodore gave away Eleanor to Franklin at their wedding. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins, once removed, and Theodore was actually Eleanor's uncle.

Most importantly, Roosevelt was never actually there in Montana. He never went on this trapping expedition. Bauman and another man experienced it. Bauman worked at Elkhorn Ranch and personally told the tale to Roosevelt, who believed him implicitly. As a writer, I chose to remove the middle man to give the story more immediacy. Thus, poor Bauman assumed the role of the unknown cowboy/trapper who never returned from the Wisdom River, and Roosevelt assumed the role of Bauman, the survivor/witness. Theodore didn't witness the events, but he trusted Bauman and for the rest of his life, Theodore's belief never wavered.