Of Glorious Combat

HAD I NOT SEEN what actually happened, and photographed it in the presence of eighteen other people, I wouldn't have believed it. It must be a very rare occurrence, for I later talked with old-timers who have ridden the antelope country for many years, and they said they had never seen or heard of the like before.

We were a group of archaeology students from the University of Arizona, out on a summer field expedition to excavate a prehis toric pueblo ruin on the ranch of the three King Brothers, about 25 miles north of Prescott, Arizona, in the Big Chino Valley. The Chino country consists of mile after mile of high rolling prairie, broken only by the meandering courses of dry arroyos, an occasional low spot holding a pool of rain water, and the juniper clad hills on the skyline in the distance. It was perfect antelope range, and you could At breakfast, with a crew of ravenous col lege boys eating hotcakes like famished wolves and talking all at once, we heard the sounds again. They were a little clearer this time, and from the same direction as before. Every body listened, and after a minute somebody said "Let's go and see what it is."

I grabbed my camera and went along with the fellows. We crossed a couple of low rolling hills to the south, and there, not a hundred yards from us, were two inanimate objects. We hurried closer to investigate, and found the graphic aftermath of a titanic battle between two Pronghorn bucks. The story was written clearly for all to see, and presented such a startling picture of the primal ferocity and stamina which motivates some of Nature's noblest creatures that we all felt humbled enough to pay a silent tribute to victor and vanquished alike.

One freak of chance one was met at a moment when his head was raised a little too high for pro tection. The weight of his opponent's body carried powerful recurving horns against his unprotected throat with such terrific impact that the horns spread apart to pass the points entirely beyond and around the neck, after which they snapped back close together, like the jaws of a steel trap.

The combatants found themselves locked together as inescapably as though their bodies were one; their violent efforts to tear apart from the strained and awkward position threw them to the ground, from which they probably never rose again. Sometime in the struggle one of the bucks flopped completely over so that the recurving horn tips of the other pressed directly on his tender throat. This was his fatal act, for the horns ripped a large hole, through which his life blood quickly gushed away.

The unhappy victor continued his fight to escape for several hours. We could not tell how long, but it was undoubtedly his groans which we had heard so early in the morning. When we found them, the dead animal was bloated and its back legs stuck stiffly out from its body. Evidence of the winner's losing fight for freedom was seen in the many up rooted tufts of bunch grass which had been kicked up by flailing feet, and the powdery dust which lay all about the near vicinity.

In order to remove the living from the dead scarcely drive half a mile without seeing one or two of them, sometimes six or eight. The beautiful tawny fellows would pay little atten tion to your car as long as it kept moving. unless they were only a hundred yards or so away. Then their white tail patches would leisurely bob out of sight as they galloped off, to turn and contemplate you again at a discreet half mile.

It was warm weather, late June of 1932, and we were sleeping with our bed rolls spread on the faint southerly slopes of a broad shallow arroyo. Toward morning, a little before day light, John Hill rolled over and nudged me. "What in the heck is that noise, Earl?"

I listened. Presently it came. At first I thought it was the moaning sigh of an early morning breeze coming through the grass from the south. It had a faint guttural qual ity, however, and died out and came again too sharply to be wind. We puzzled for a few minutes and then, not hearing it any more, found the pre-dawn chill a further invitation to shut-eye, and turned over to catch a few more winks.

These two splendid animals, in the very prime of life and aggressive virility, had crossed trails, and each had decided there was no longer room for the other in his domain. They had lowered heads and charged at each other with the abandoned ferocity of their kind. In all likelihood they charged again and again, each with the full punishing weight of his body, back of head and powerful shoulders. By a we attempted to spread his horns apart. But two husky college boys hadn't enough strength to do this, and we had to cut off the head of the victim to separate them. Then one of the fellows went to notify a game warden of what had occurred, so that nobody would be ques tioned over possession of an antelope's horns, while we loaded the survivor into the back of a pickup truck and took him to camp, where there was shade and water to force down the dry and thickened throat. For a little while we thought the game fellow would rally, as he weakly strove to raise his head, but that dauntless spirit was burned out, and within an hour he was on his way to the happy hunt ing grounds.