Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest
by George Bird Grinnell · English · Gutenberg #45443 · 495,668 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest
Author: George Bird Grinnell
Release date: April 20, 2014 [eBook #45443]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45443
Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACK THE YOUNG EXPLORER: A BOY'S EXPERIANCES IN THE UNKNOWN NORTHWEST ***
Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
JACK, THE YOUNG EXPLORER
_By the same Author_
JACK THE YOUNG COWBOY
JACK THE YOUNG TRAPPER
JACK THE YOUNG CANOEMAN
JACK THE YOUNG EXPLORER
JACK IN THE ROCKIES
JACK AMONG THE INDIANS
JACK THE YOUNG RANCHMAN
PAWNEE HERO STORIES AND FOLK TALES
BLACKFOOT LODGE TALES
THE STORY OF THE INDIAN
THE INDIANS OF TO-DAY
THE PUNISHMENT OF THE STINGY
AMERICAN DUCK SHOOTING
AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING
TRAILS OF THE PATHFINDERS
[Illustration: “THE TENT WAS SHIVERING AND SHAKING AND FROM IT EMERGED
GROANS AND GROWLS.”--_Page 130_]
JACK
THE YOUNG EXPLORER
_A Boy’s Experiences in the
Unknown Northwest_
BY
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL
Author of “Jack in the Rockies,” “Jack the Young Ranchman,”
“Jack Among the Indians,” “Pawnee Hero Stories,”
“Jack the Young Trapper,” etc.
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1908, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_September, 1908_
Eighth Printing
_Printed in the United States of America_
FOREWORD
For untold ages the mountain goats had clambered undisturbed along the
face of the steep precipices that overhang the St Mary’s River and Swift
Current. Over the slide rock fallen from their cliffs the wild sheep had
beaten out paths and trails zigzagging from the valley below to the
heights above. On the lower wooded slopes the elk browsed in spring and
fall, climbing high above the timber at the season when the flies were
bad, and again when snows fell at the approach of winter, working their
way down toward the lower lands and the foothills of the prairie. In the
thick swamps and morasses of the river bottom the moose dwelt, sometimes
clambering up toward the heights, but more often escaping the summer
flies by burying their huge bodies beneath the waters of the lakes, or
perhaps by wallowing in some great bog, from which they emerged covered
with black mud which, drying, formed a coating that protected them.
Everywhere through the valleys, on the hillsides, far up on the bald
knolls, and even higher still, where the sheep and goats delighted to
climb, the buffalo of the mountains--called by old mountaineers bison,
to distinguish them from the yellower, sunburned animals of the
plains--wandered singly or in little groups.
These rough and rocky fastnesses protected them well.
The Indians of the plains never tried to pass beneath these gloomy
walls. Occasionally a white man or half-breed, more frequently a little
band of Kootenay or Stoney Indians, true mountaineers, followed up these
rivers for a short distance, hunting the game and trapping the beaver;
but in those days game was so plentiful that these occasional excursions
made no impression on it. The Indians had few guns and hunted
noiselessly, chiefly with bows and arrows. For the most part, it was
easier to kill the buffalo of the plains by the swift chase than to go
into the rough mountains and hunt the game that lived higher up.
It was into this region, as yet unknown to white people, that Jack and
his friends now entered, in order to explore it and learn for themselves
what it held.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A MEETING OF FRIENDS 1
II. HISTORIC LAND 17
III. THE BLACKFOOT AGENCY 31
IV. A MEDICINE PIPE CEREMONY 43
V. OFF FOR THE MOUNTAINS 59
VI. A SHEEP HUNT 75
VII. OLD-TIME HUNTING WAYS 85
VIII. A BIG BEAR HIDE 94
IX. A BLACKFOOT LEGEND 107
X. THE SOURCE OF AN UNKNOWN RIVER 114
XI. THE RETREAT 133
XII. THE WAYS OF BEAVER 150
XIII. THE FORKS OF SWIFT CURRENT 163
XIV. A LYNX VISITS CAMP 178
XV. LONE WOLF’S BAY PONY 196
XVI. AN ICE RIVER 214
XVII. A FAT BIGHORN 229
XVIII. AMONG THE ICEFIELDS 244
XIX. A FOUR-FOOTED HUNTER 257
XX. CLIMBING A GREAT MOUNTAIN 276
XXI. TROUBLE WITH WHISKEY TRADERS 289
TO-DAY 306
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The tent was shivering and shaking and from it
emerged groans and growls” _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“Bruce had to keep up, for if he had fallen he would
have been dragged and kicked to death” 212
“Jack did not raise his sights, but following Hugh’s
suggestion, fired at the animal’s neck” 230
“Hugh took hold of his wrist and wrenched the
revolver away from him” 292
JACK, THE YOUNG EXPLORER
CHAPTER I
A MEETING OF FRIENDS
As the train drew slowly into the Helena station Jack’s eyes searched
the platform, looking for Hugh, and in a moment he recognized the tall
form, standing well back from the crowd and looking at the platform of
each car as it passed.
“Hurrah, Hugh!” called Jack, as he waved his hand frantically; but he
had to jump down to the platform and elbow his way through the crowd
before Hugh’s eye caught his.
“Well, son,” said Hugh, as he grasped his hand in a firm clasp, “I sure
am glad to see you. I only got here last night myself, but it’s been a
long day waiting around here alone, and I was afraid that maybe you
wouldn’t come on this train.”
“Well,” replied Jack, “I’m mighty glad to get here. I was a little
afraid that maybe something might have happened to keep you, and that I
should have to do the waiting. It’s all right now though, and I hope we
can get off to-morrow. I don’t want to stop in towns any more than you
do, and I guess we shall both be glad to get into camp.”
“Sure, we will,” said Hugh. “Now, what have you in the way of baggage?
Of course you’ve got your bed, and I see your gun and bag in your hand.
I’ve got a room at the Merchants’ Hotel, and I reckon we might as well
go up there, and then after you’ve eaten we can see the sights.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ve got a small trunk and my bed, and we can pack
those up to the hotel, and then I’ll put the stuff I need in my bed and
my war bag and we’ll be all ready for the stage whenever it goes.”
“All right,” said Hugh, “I reckon we better take one of these hacks
here, and the man can put your things on top, while we ride inside. It
isn’t much of a walk up to the hotel, only about a mile, but maybe we’d
better get there as quick as we can and have our dinner and attend to
our business, and then we won’t have anything on our minds.”
Before long they were rolling rapidly over the smooth road toward the
town, which stands at some distance from the railroad. As they passed
along, Jack saw, to the right, enormous piles of cobblestones extending
for half a mile or more toward the town. For some time he looked at them
with curiosity, and then asked Hugh what they were.
“Why, don’t you know?” Hugh replied. “That’s the old placer ground that
they used to work over when this camp was first settled. Last Chance
Gulch they called it. That gravel and rock that you see there came out
of the sluice boxes. Every little while, I’m told, a man comes down here
now and works over some of that gravel, and they say that to-day there’s
fair wages to be made mining right here in the town. I’ve heard that
there are some Chinamen that work these gravels right along. There’s a
heap of gold been taken out of that gulch, but, of course, just how much
nobody knows. Every now and then, in digging the foundations of a house
in town, some man will turn up a little nugget of gold, and then all
the workmen quit digging and begin to pan out the foundations.”
“That seems queer, Hugh, doesn’t it? I suppose the same thing happens in
lots of places along the Rocky Mountains, because a great many of the
big towns now stand where old mining camps used to be.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s surely true. There’s lots of gold left in the
sides of these hills yet, even after the miners have been over the
dirt.”
“What kind of a trip did you have coming up, Hugh?” asked Jack. “Did
anything happen on the road?”
“No,” replied Hugh; “nothing of any account. Joe drove me in to the
railroad with my stuff. He had to come in for a load of groceries and a
keg of nails, and I took the train west to Ogden, and that little narrow
gauge road up to Garrisons, and then came east on the main line. I was
kind of scared that maybe I’d get lost, making so many changes; but
everybody I met was mighty pleasant spoken, and I didn’t have a mite of
trouble. Of course you know what I saw on the road, for you and I went
back that same way two years ago, when we came back from the coast.”
By this time they were climbing the hills of the town, and a moment
later the hack stopped in front of the Merchants’ Hotel. Jack got a
room, in which his things were put, and the two friends went down to
dinner.
After this was over, it took Jack but half an hour to get from his trunk
and pack in his bag the few things that he needed for his trip, and then
he and Hugh sallied out and took a long walk out of town, into the high
hills which overlook Helena and the great flat through which the river
flows.
On the way back they passed the stage office and arranged for two seats
on the box of the stage that left the next morning.
“It ain’t much use for you to engage these seats,” said the man in the
office; “I don’t believe there’s ary person going out to-morrow morning
except you two, still I’ll put your names down for the two seats on the
box if you like. It can’t do no harm, anyhow. You have your stuff down
here to-morrow morning any time after seven o’clock and we’ll take care
of it and see that it goes on the stage.”
Their long walk had given Hugh and Jack a good appetite and they
heartily enjoyed their supper. After they had eaten they started out
again and walked through the brilliantly lighted streets, looking in at
the windows of shops and saloons, each of which seemed to be full of
customers. The air was mild and balmy and the beautiful night had
brought many people into the street.
As they passed an open door, from which shone a bright light, Jack
looked in and saw people sitting at tables playing cards, while toward
the back of the room was a long narrow table surrounded by men who
seemed greatly interested in what was going on.
“What are they doing in there, Hugh?” said Jack.
“Why, I reckon that’s a gambling house,” was the reply. “You know
there’s no law against gambling in most of these Montana towns, the way
I hear there is in towns back East. Everybody is free to go in and play
if he wants to.”
“I’ve never been in a gambling house, Hugh. Can’t we go in and look on?
I’d like to see what they are doing.”
“Why, yes,” said Hugh; “there’s no harm in going in and looking on. That
isn’t the sort of thing that I would do for fun, but there’s no harm in
it and you may see something that will teach you a good lesson. I never
was much on gambling myself. I never had much money to lose, and I never
wanted to win anybody else’s. It never seemed to me quite square to take
money without you worked for it. I never could see the sense of betting,
either; but, come on; let’s go in.”
Hugh led the way into the room, and Jack followed. The people playing at
the various tables and those overlooking the game paid no attention to
them. All were intent on their own affairs. Hugh walked around to one
end of the long table and gradually edged his way into the crowd, gently
pushing men this way and that in so good-natured a fashion that no one
objected to it. Jack kept close behind him, and presently, when Hugh had
reached a point where he had a good view of the table, he squeezed back
a little and let Jack pass in and stand in front of him.
Behind the table sat a man smoking a long cigar, while in front of him
was a little silver box about the size of a playing card, from which at
short intervals the man drew two cards, one after another, which he
placed on two little piles by the box. In the middle of the table was a
long frame on which were painted representations of cards, and on these
cards, in various positions, were placed circular disks, white, red, and
blue. The players placed these disks on the cards, and then when two
cards came out of the box, sometimes the dealer took over to his side of
the table the chips that were on a particular card, or else put on that
card as many more chips as were already on it. Then the player usually
removed these chips and put some or all of them on another card. Most of
the people about the table appeared to be acquainted with each other,
and those who spoke to the dealer seemed to know him, calling him by his
first name. For some minutes Jack watched the game intently and began to
have a glimmering idea of how it was played. Once or twice he whispered
a question to Hugh, but Hugh shook his head for silence, and one or two
of the people near by looked frowningly at the speaker. “Evidently,”
Jack thought, “this is not a place for conversation.”
As they stood there, the crowd in the room increased; more and more
people gathered around the faro table; the smoke in the air grew
thicker, and there was the sound of more or less hum and bustle.
Presently Jack felt a hand on his shoulder, and looking back at Hugh saw
him move his head toward the door, and the two pushed their way through
the crowd and out again into the street.
“Might as well get away from there,” said Hugh; “they are playing pretty
heavy. Two or three men came in that were full of liquor, and it looks
to me as if there might be trouble in there to-night. There’s no special
reason why we should be there if there’s going to be any shooting.”
“No,” said Jack, “I should say not. It’s about the last place in which
I’d want to be shot, a gambling house.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “you’re dead right about that. I don’t know as I’d
mind about being killed if I had to be killed, but I’d like to have it
done in the right sort of a place.”
“Is there much of that thing going on in town, Hugh?” asked Jack.
“Right smart,” said Hugh. “I reckon from what I saw last night and from
what I hear that there must be twenty-five or thirty places like that,
and maybe a good many more that are not as decent as that one.”
“Well,” said Jack, “do men lose much money there?”
“I reckon they do,” answered Hugh. “A whole lot more than they can
afford, even if the game is straight. There’s quite a percentage in
favor of the dealer and a good many of the games are not straight.”
“How do you mean, Hugh?” said Jack. “Do the gamblers cheat?”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I reckon they do. Some of those fellows are awful
slick at dealing and shuffling. They can shuffle the cards just about
the way they want them, so that they know just what card is coming out
next, and if they see the bets are going against them they can slip two
cards out of the box instead of one and make themselves win instead of
lose.”
“But,” said Jack, “I should think they would get caught at it.”
“No,” said Hugh, “scarcely ever; and if a man does see anything crooked,
it’s only his word against the dealer’s, and the dealer is apt to have
two or three friends around the table who will talk for him. If the
worst comes to worst, why, of course, the dealer has got to draw quick,
and usually he is a man who can do that.”
“Do you mean shoot, Hugh?” said Jack.
“Well, yes,” said Hugh; “sometimes it comes to that, though generally
the dealer can bluff it out, especially if he’s got two or three men to
wrangle and shout for him.”
“Well,” said Jack, “that seems pretty rough.”
“It is rough,” said Hugh; “but that’s the way it is in a good many of
these towns.”
Soon after seven o’clock next morning Jack and Hugh were at the stage
office with their beds, their bags, and their rifles. For a time they
sat on their rolls of bedding talking, but at length a man came out from
a stable near by and spoke to Hugh, and the beds were carried into the
stable and lashed on to the rack behind the stage and the bags thrown
into the boot under the driver’s seat. A little later the four horses
were brought out and hitched to the vehicle, and presently the driver,
carrying his long whip, came from the office. The stage was led out into
the street before the stable, the driver mounted, and Jack and Hugh
followed him, all three sitting on the front seat. Then a clerk came
from the office and spoke to the driver, telling him that there were no
other passengers that morning, and with a parting nod the team started
off and trotted swiftly out of town.
“Hugh,” said Jack, “is this the sort of stage that they use everywhere
in the mountains?”
“No,” replied Hugh, “I reckon not. This is the old-fashioned stage, such
as they used to drive in crossing the plains away back before the
railroad was built, but stage-driving is pretty near over now and the
old stages are laid on the shelf. Usually for these short little
mountain trips most any kind of a jerky or even a lumber wagon is used.
This stage here is one of the real old kind.”
It was a high, large vehicle hung on C springs, with abundant room
inside and two or three seats without. Back of the seats the roof of the
coach was strengthened with slats of wood running lengthwise, and all
about this roof was a high iron railing, so that a good lot of baggage
might be piled there and lashed firmly to the top.
“I have seen coaches like this more than once,” said Jack. “Up in
Massachusetts, where my grandfather lives, they have just such a coach
as this to send around the village to gather passengers for the train in
the morning, and it takes away the passengers that come by the train and
leaves them at their homes. Once, too, when I went to the Catskill
Mountains, they had a stage like this to take us from the landing at the
river up to the hotel, a long drive.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “these coaches are easy to ride in, but by the time a
man’s been on the stage about twenty-four hours he is generally in the
frame of mind where he is willing to fight with his best friend. You
see, the trouble is, he can’t get any sleep, and without sleep a man’s
temper shortens up pretty fast.”
“Well,” said Jack, “we have got to go more than twenty-four hours
without sleep, haven’t we? We travel right along, don’t we?” he asked,
turning to the driver, who nodded in reply and added that it would take
in the neighborhood of twenty-four hours to get to Benton. “Of course,”
he remarked, “we could go faster if there was any reason for it. We
change teams about every fifteen miles, but there is no reason why we
should hurry the horses. It doesn’t make any difference to you, I
reckon, whether yet get in at four o’clock in the morning or six, does
it?”
“Not a bit,” said Jack. “I like this riding on a stage, but I don’t know
just how long I’ll continue to like it.”
They had now turned from the flat prairie, over which the smooth road
ran straight, and were entering a wide valley of the mountains, which
gradually closed in on them until there seemed hardly room for more than
the river that flowed through it and the road.
“That’s Wolf Creek,” said the driver, motioning toward the stream with
his whip. “And this here canyon that we are going through is called
Prickly Pear Canyon.”
On either side of the stream the hills rose sharply, sometimes in steep
grassy slopes, shaggy with clumps of small pines and spruces, at others,
in a sheer rocky precipice, or yet again in steep slopes covered with
small shrubbery through which great knobs of rock showed here and there.
“Any game on these hills?” asked Hugh of the driver.
“Plenty of deer,” was the reply, “and some elk; lots of bear, too. Not
many people travel over these hills, except prospectors, and they don’t
do any hunting to amount to anything.”
As he finished speaking, Jack, who had been scanning the hillside ahead
of the team, suddenly grasped Hugh’s arm and said, “There’s a deer now,
Hugh.”
“Sure enough,” said Hugh, and all hands looking, a black-tail was seen
feeding alone on the hillside, not eating the grass, but walking from
one clump of weeds or brush to another and biting a mouthful of food
from each. As they drew nearer, the animal heard the trotting of the
horses or the rattle of the coach and stood for a few moments looking
innocently at the team as it approached. The deer was a young buck, his
horns, of course, in the velvet, for it was but the last of June. He
studied the team with his huge ears turned forward to catch the sound
which it made, and every now and then lifted his head higher, and seemed
to feel the air with his nose.
At last, when the coach was fairly close to him, the driver said, “Do
either of you want to take a shot at him?”
“Not I,” said Hugh.
“Nor I,” said Jack.
“Well,” said the driver, “I’m glad you don’t, for it would take us some
time to butcher him, and I don’t like to loaf much just after starting
out. The end of the day is the better time to drive slowly.”
Presently the buck seemed to have satisfied himself that there was
possible danger in this great object approaching him, and turning, he
bounded lightly along the hillside, gradually working up until at last
he passed out of sight.
“Wasn’t it fine, Hugh,” said Jack, “to see him use his nose. That is
what a deer depends on, isn’t it? He doesn’t trust his eyes very much,
nor his ears, but his nose never lies to him.”
“Well,” replied Hugh, “that’s so. And it isn’t so only about deer, but
about all sorts of game animals. I’ve had deer walk right straight up to
me. So long as I kept still they didn’t pay any attention to me, and
likely thought I was a stump or a rock, but just as soon as they passed
along near enough to catch the wind of me they never stopped to look or
listen, but got up and dusted the best they knew how; and yet you can
come on a bunch of deer and they’ll hear you and jump to their feet and
look at you, and maybe you can fire three or four shots at them and kill
two or three before they’ll run away.”
“Yes,” said the driver, “that’s sure enough true; but you mustn’t say
that it’s only deer or game that acts that way. Take a dog now----”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s right enough, too.”
“Why,” said the driver, “I have seen dogs--owned ’em, too--that didn’t
seem to get any satisfaction at all out of their eyes; they couldn’t
trust them. I have seen the time when I’d be walking along with my dog,
and maybe I’d get a little ahead or a little behind him and I’d stop to
talk with three or four fellows, and the dog would start to look for me;
and even if he saw me right plain, he wouldn’t be sure it was me until
he had come up behind me and stuck the end of his nose against my leg so
that he could smell me. I remember once standing with three or four men
in front of the Bella saloon in Benton when my dog did a trick like
that. One of the men I was talking to didn’t like dogs; in fact, he was
awful scared of them. The dog came up to us and smelt of each man, and
when he shoved his nose hard against the leg of the man who was afraid
of dogs, the man felt the dog’s nose and looked down and saw the dog,
and he thought he’d been bit. He jumped about four feet into the air and
reached for his gun to try to kill the dog that had bit him, but the
others of us got hold of him and held him until we’d explained matters.
“Curious how scared some people are over a little thing, and yet maybe
all the time they’ve got good sand and wouldn’t run away in the worst
kind of a scrap.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s one of the queer things about human nature;
you never can tell what it is that is going to scare a man. I’ve seen
men that would run a mile to get away from some little bug like a spider
or a hornet, and yet I know those men weren’t cowards, because I’ve seen
them in tight places and they were always willing to take as many risks
as anybody. Why, once I even saw a man that was afraid of a mouse.”
“No?” exclaimed the stage driver.
“Fact,” said Hugh. “He was afraid of a mouse, and when one ran over his
face, just after he had gone to bed, he got up and sat by the fire all
night for fear it would do it again.”
“Why, Hugh,” said Jack, “don’t you remember that the great Napoleon was
afraid of a cat. It would make him sick if there was one in the room,
even though he didn’t see it and didn’t know that it was there. And
Napoleon was one of the greatest soldiers that ever lived, and, I
suppose, a brave man.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I reckon he was.”
“I have known lots of people,” Jack went on, “who were afraid of snakes.
It didn’t make any difference whether they were venomous snakes or not.
Just as long as they were snakes, they scared these people.”
“That’s so,” said Hugh. “I’ve known one man that was afraid of snakes,
and, what’s more, he could tell if there was one around, whether he saw
it or not. He said he smelled them. That seems queer, too.”
“It does for a fact,” remarked the driver.
Before they had passed through the Prickly Pear Canyon they reached the
stage station where the horses were to be changed. There all hands got
down and walked about a little to stretch their legs; but in a very few
minutes four fresh horses had been harnessed and they recommenced their
journey.
“Do you ever have trouble with road agents on this line?” Hugh asked of
the driver.
“No,” said he, “we’ve never been stopped but once. The fact is, we
scarcely ever carry anything that makes it worth while for anyone to
stop the stage. Early this spring, though, my partner was held up just
as he was coming over the Bird Tail Divide. There had been some talk of
sending out some dust from Benton by the stage, but it was given up and
the gold went out another way. Of course none of us knew that it was
going, but the news must have got out somehow, for that night, just as
the stage reached the top of the Bird Tail Divide and the two leaders
had got up onto the level, two men stepped out in the moonlight and told
Buck--that’s my partner--to stop. He started to lay the whip on his
horses, but they were all walking, and the men brought down their guns
and called to him again that if he started they’d kill the leaders. So
he pulled up and asked the men what they wanted, and they said they
wanted the treasure chest and told him to throw it down. He said there
wasn’t any treasure chest, and if they didn’t believe him they could
come and search the coach. With that a third man that Buck hadn’t seen
before popped up from the side of the road and climbed up and looked
through the boot and searched Buck, and then went through the whole
stage. They were a pretty mad lot when they let Buck go on.”
“Was it ever known who they were?”
“No,” said the driver. “I always had an idea that Buck knew who the
little fellow was that searched the stage, but as they didn’t get
anything and didn’t bother Buck any, I reckon he didn’t want to say much
about it.”
All through the day they trotted briskly forward changing horses at
regular intervals, so that the teams were always fresh and progress
rapid. They had dinner and supper at the stage stations which they
passed, and about ten o’clock at night reached Fort Shaw.
By this time both Hugh and Jack were tired and sleepy, but the driver
seemed as fresh as ever.
While the horses were being changed, Hugh sat down on the front steps of
the building and smoked his pipe, and Jack, trying to get the sleep out
of his eyes, walked up and down on the boardwalk. As he was doing this
he was joined by a little Irishman, who conversed pleasantly.
“Are you working now?” said the little man, as he puffed at his short
pipe.
“No,” said Jack, “not now. I’m just going up to Benton.”
“Do yez want work?” asked the stranger. “I need a couple more hands on
me ranch down below here and I’d like to hire yez. Thirty dollars and
board is what I pay; good wages for the time and for the country.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’d like the work and I’d like the money, but I’m
just traveling through the country and I’ve got to meet a man in Benton,
and couldn’t stop now to take even a good job.”
“Well,” said the man, “I’m sorry. If ever yez come through Shaw again,
maybe ye’d be needin’ work, and ye’d better come to my place and see if
I can’t give yez a job. Maloney is me name, on Sun River, five miles
below the post.”
Jack was quite tickled at this offer, and when they started again, told
Hugh about it.
“Yes,” said Hugh, “you are getting to be a man now, and ought to be able
to do a man’s work, and I reckon you are.”
All through the night the stage rattled and swung over the prairie, and
soon after the sun rose the next morning trotted swiftly across Benton
bottom and drew up at the end of its journey.
CHAPTER II
HISTORIC LAND
“There are some friends of ours,” said Hugh, as the stage approached the
hotel, and he raised his hand and made the Indian sign to attract
attention.
“Yes,” said Jack, “I see them. There is Baptiste and there’s Joe, too.
It’s splendid to see them both again.” Jack signaled earnestly and made
the sign for shaking hands, to which his two friends responded.
As the stage drew up, Hugh said, “Now, son, you get down into the boot
and haul out our bags and throw them to me,” and when Hugh had reached
the ground Jack passed him the bags and then sprang down himself. There
were hearty handshakes and many questions between the four delighted
friends, and presently Baptiste said, “Casse-tête, let us go now to my
cabane, and there we will eat and smoke. I have many things to ask you.”
“All right,” said Hugh. “Just wait a minute till I see about our beds.”
In the meantime Jack and Joe had engaged in a sort of war dance,
followed by a wrestling match, to express their joy at meeting again,
and then Jack thought of the beds on the coach and ran and unstrapped
the leather apron which covered the baggage rack, and the two boys,
loosening the lashings, threw the beds on the ground by the hotel door.
“Hello,” said Hugh, “those boys have got our beds off now. We can go
on. Just set those beds inside the office, and tell the clerk we’ll stop
for them with the wagon when we start. Then come on to Bat’s cabin.”
Before long Hugh and Jack were seated in the cabin, while Baptiste and
Joe were busily engaged in the work of preparing breakfast. Soon all
were seated at the table. The fare was simple, but heartily enjoyed, for
all had healthy appetites and contented minds.
“How are you getting on, Bat?” said Hugh. “How do you live? Just about
as you did a couple of years ago?”
“Yes,” said Baptiste; “I live well; I always have lived well since you
and these boys came in from the north and made me that fine present of
the gold that you think I lost many years ago. Every month the bank pays
me my money, and then besides I work a little for the company at the
furs, so they pay me something, and I have some money that I can spend.
I have bought me two horses, and sometimes I go off on a hunt; sometimes
I trap a little. It is not much, but it is pleasant; it brings back to
my mind the old days. Also, my mind is better than it was. I do not
forget things as I used to. It was a good thing for me when you three
men came in from the north and found me here, and you would not have
found me except for the charger that Jack picked up on the prairie.”
“Doesn’t it seem wonderful that the finding of that little piece of
metal should have changed a man’s life as yours has been changed,
Baptiste?” said Jack.
“Yes,” said Hugh; “we, none of us, can ever tell what influence the
smallest thing we do will have on other people. Now, Joe,” he went on,
“have you got a team here, and are you ready to take us out to the camp,
as Mr. Sturgis wrote you?”
“Yes,” said Joe, “the team’s here and the wagon, and I reckon we can
make the agency in three or four days and we can start just whenever you
are ready. I’ve got a mess outfit and some coffee and sugar and bacon
and flour, and if you need anything more we can get it here. I’m ready
to start as soon as you are.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “the sooner we get off the better, I expect. What do
you say, son?”
“Why,” replied Jack, “you can’t start too soon for me. I’m anxious to
get to the camp, and then into the mountains. I always feel as if I
didn’t have much time out here anyhow, and I want to make the most of
what I have.”
“Well, then,” said Hugh, as they pushed back their chairs from the
table, “let’s sit down and smoke a pipe and talk for a little while, and
then you and Jack can go and get the team, and Bat and I will sit here
and chew the rag about old times until you come for us. Get the beds and
the bags when you come by the hotel, and then we can pull right out. I
reckon Joe has grub enough and we won’t have to buy anything here
without it is a piece of fresh meat. We might get beef enough for two or
three meals, but the weather is kind o’ hot now, and likely there’ll be
a chance to get meat at some of the ranches we pass if we need it.”
For a time Hugh and Baptiste sat together talking about the old trapping
days, bringing up one after another the names of men whom they had
known, and relating incidents of hunting, trapping, buffalo chasing,
and Indian fighting. Jack thought it was good to listen to, but at
length Hugh turned to the boys and said, “Well, go on now and get your
wagon and we’ll pull out. It’s a long ways from here to the agency, and
every hour we lose on this end we’ve got to make up on the other.”
The boys started off for the team, leaving the old men to sit in the sun
and talk about the past. A little later the wagon drew up to the door,
and Hugh, after glancing through its contents and tightening one of the
ropes that lashed on the load, said, “Well, we may as well be going.
Good-by, Bat; we’re likely to get back here about two months hence, and
we’ll meet then. I reckon up in the camp we’ll see all the Monroes and
old man Choquette, but those are all the old-timers we’re likely to
meet. So long,” and he climbed into the wagon.
“Good-by, Baptiste,” said Jack, as he shook hands, and Joe, reaching
down from the driver’s seat, pressed the old man’s hand without a word.
“Good-by, my friends, good-by,” said Baptiste. “It has been good to see
you. Always your coming brings joy to my heart. I shall look for you to
come again.”
Joe gathered up the reins, spoke to the horses, and in a moment they
were rattling along the street headed for the road leading up the Teton
River.
It was a beautiful day. The air was cool and pleasant, yet the sun shone
warm. The prairie and the distant hills were still green, and beautiful
flowers dotted the plain. From the top of almost every sage brush came
the sweet, mellow whistle of the meadow lark. In the air all about
birds were rising from the ground, singing as though their throats would
burst, and then after reaching a certain height, slowly floating down
again on outspread wings, the song ending just as they reached the
ground.
After they had gone a short distance away from the town the country
seemed as lonely as the wildest prairie. Far off, here and there, grazed
a few cattle or horses. Ahead of them the white, level road wound about
among the bushes of the sage. To Jack it was all very delightful. The
change from the crowded city was absolute, and as he looked about him
and enjoyed his surroundings his heart seemed to swell within his
breast, and he felt as though he could hardly speak.
Presently Joe said to Hugh, “Have you plenty of room, White Bull? I got
this extra wide seat before I started because I thought we’d all want to
sit on one seat, but I don’t know whether it gives you room enough.”
“Oh, yes,” said Hugh, “there’s lots of room for all of us.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “we could pretty nearly put another man here.”
“Now, Joe,” said Hugh a little later, “I want to ask you something about
the people. I heard that two years ago, and maybe last year also, they
starved, and that many of them died. I heard, too, that even up here the
buffalo have all gone.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that is true. Two years ago and also last year the
people starved, but it was two years ago that the most of them died,
that is, one winter back from this winter that has just passed. Old
Four Bears kept a kind of count on a stick, cutting a notch for every
person that died, and they say that nearly six hundred of the people
starved to death. There was no food. The buffalo had not been seen for
two winters. The people had hunted and sometimes killed an elk or a deer
or a few antelope, but at last these had all been killed, and there was
left nothing but rabbits and such birds as we could shoot or snare. It
was a hard time; everybody was hungry. Everybody got poor. Even people
that had once been heavy and had much fat on their bodies grew lean and
thin. When you looked at the old people, the women and the children, you
could see their bones sticking out against the skin. The little children
and the old people were the ones that died. The men and the women were
very hungry and got weak, but they did not die. White Calf, who is now
the chief, asked the agent to give us what food there was in the
storehouse and let us have one good meal and then die, but the agent
would not do it. He told us to go out and kill food for ourselves. You
know Father Prando?” Hugh nodded.
“Well, he had seen for a long time what was coming and he had written to
people back East, asking that food might be sent out to us, and telling
them that unless it was sent we should all starve to death. Besides
that, he wrote to the commanding officer at Fort Shaw, and during the
winter an officer was sent up to the agency to see how the people were
getting on. This officer came and went around through the camp, and
asked the people to tell him the truth. He didn’t have to ask many
questions; he had eyes and could see for himself. They tell me that in
some of the lodges that officer sat and cried; that the tears ran down
his face as they do down the face of a woman whose child has just died.
“After a while he went away, and we heard nothing more, but presently
the news came that wagons loaded with food were coming from Fort Shaw,
and then a little while after that came a government inspector who asked
many questions and removed the agent and stopped here. This inspector
was a good man, I think. He kept sending messages to Fort Shaw and
trying to hurry the food along, and they say that he sent telegrams to
Washington. Anyhow, about the end of the winter wagons began to come
loaded with flour and bacon, and this was given out to the people, and
then the suffering stopped, and the people stopped dying. After a little
while, too, we got a new agent, a good man, who seems to be trying to
help the people. He taught them how to plow the ground and to put seed
into it. Maybe that is good. The seed grew, but it did not get ripe. We
had plenty of oat straw, but no oats; but ever since the food began to
come a year ago last winter we have been doing better.”
“Well, well, that’s a hard story,” said Hugh. “How did it come that
there was not food enough in the warehouses to help the people along?”
“I heard two of the white men that have married into the tribe talking,”
said Joe, “and they said that the agent had been writing to Washington
that the Indians were doing well and were growing crops and becoming
civilized. They said that he wrote those things so that the people at
Washington would think that he was a great man and was helping the
Indians along. Of course the people never grew any crops; they didn’t
know how. They lived well enough as long as there were buffalo, but when
the buffalo went away, then the people had nothing to depend on.”
“You say nearly six hundred died?” asked Hugh.
“That is what they told me,” replied Joe.
“Good Lord,” said Hugh, “that was about one-fourth of the people. I
don’t suppose there was more than twenty-five hundred or three thousand
Piegans at best.”
“I don’t know,” said Joe, “how many there were, but I know that many
died. You can see their bodies in all the trees along the creeks.”
“But, Hugh,” said Jack, “how is it possible that such a thing should
occur? Why didn’t the people back East know about this suffering and
send food out to relieve it?”
“Well, son,” said Hugh, “you know it’s an awful long way from here back
East, and then it’s hard always to get at the truth about any of these
stories. An Indian reservation is a great place for getting up kicks and
complaints, and I suppose that maybe those people in Washington are so
used to hearing complaints that they don’t pay much attention to them.”
“But just think,” said Jack, “of six hundred people being starved to
death. It’s almost impossible to believe it.”
“I reckon,” said Hugh, “that we’ll find a good many of our old friends
dead when we get to the camp.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “a good many.”
All day long the horses trotted briskly up the level road along the
Teton River. The sun was hot, but a cool breeze blew down from the
mountains to the west and the whole country was fresh, green, and
charming. About three o’clock they camped on the river at the edge of a
grove of cottonwood trees, and unhitching the horses, Joe and Jack
picketed them on the fresh green grass. Hugh, meanwhile, had brought
some wood and built the campfire, and before long supper was ready.
As they sat about after eating, Hugh smoking his pipe, the boys lounging
in the warm sunshine, and all watching the sun as it sank toward the
west, and the shadows of the cottonwoods grow longer minute by minute,
Hugh said to Jack, “We were talking this morning, son, about the hard
times the Piegans have had this winter, and that brought to my mind
another hard time that they had a good many years ago.”
“What was that, Hugh?” said Jack, sitting up to listen, while Joe, who
had been lying on his back with his eyes shut, rolled over so that he
faced the old man.
“Did you ever hear of the Baker massacre?” asked Hugh.
“No,” said Jack, “I never did.”
“I did,” said Joe. “My father was killed that time. I don’t remember
anything about it. I was too little. Only I remember my mother, how she
cried.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “lots of people cried that time.”
“Tell us about it,” said Jack.
“Well,” said Hugh, “it’s quite a long story and it made quite a fuss in
its time, not so much among the white folks out here as among the
Indians and, as I’ve heard, among white people back East. It certainly
was a bad killing. You read in the books about the way Indians massacre
white women and children when they’re on the warpath, but I reckon
Indians never did anything worse than this killing at the Baker
massacre. The way the white men killed and cut up the Cheyenne and
Arapahoe women and children at Sand Creek down in Colorado, and the way
they killed women and children up here on the Marias, no Indians could
ever beat.”
Hugh paused, and looked around for a twig with which to push down the
fire in his pipe.
“I’ve heard about the Sand Creek massacre, Hugh,” said Jack, “though I
never heard the whole story. Some day I’m going to get you to tell me
that; but what was the Baker massacre?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “along in ’66-’67, and from that time up to 1870,
this country up here in Montana was run over by a whole lot of different
Indian tribes. Of course it was Piegan country, and with the Piegans
were the Blackfeet and Bloods, and a part of the time the Gros Ventres
of the prairie. They were all on good terms with each other after the
Gros Ventres made peace with the Piegans along about 1868. Besides
these, there were the Crows, who were hostile to the Blackfeet, and
every now and then the Kootenays would come over the mountains and have
a scrap, and the Crees would come down from the north and steal Piegan
horses, and Assinaboines and other Sioux would come up from the east and
they’d tackle the Blackfeet. Pretty nearly any of these Indians, if they
saw a chance to run off some stock or to kill a lone white man would do
it, but the Piegans, being close at home and always within reach, got
the credit of most of the deviltry that was done. As a matter of fact,
I reckon it was the Sioux and Assinaboines that did most of it. Anyhow,
the trappers and traders and freighters in the country, and there were
quite a number of them, got to thinking that the Piegans made all the
trouble. I reckon that the Bloods from the north, and sometimes a band
of Blackfeet coming down to visit the Piegans, did considerable horse
stealing, and maybe they killed a few white men.
“Along about that time, too, Malcolm Clark took it into his head to
pound up a young Piegan and gave him a terrible beating, and this young
Piegan, who was a brother of Clark’s wife, went off and got a party of
his friends and went back and killed Clark. Meantime all the Piegans
were camping in their country as usual and were passing back and forth,
going into Benton and not looking for any trouble at all; but some of
the toughs in Benton, whose names I won’t mention, because you may meet
some of them, took an old Piegan, a beaver trapper and a good old man,
and killed him and threw him into the river; and another man took out a
young boy, considerably younger than you are, and just shot him down in
the street. A lot of false reports were sent back East about what the
Indians had been doing, and the result was that Colonel Baker was
ordered to march against a certain village of Indians who were camping
up here on the Marias, north of where we are now and about forty miles
from Benton. The troops were guided by two men who are now living on the
Piegan reservation, each of them married to an Indian woman. The orders
given to Colonel Baker were to strike Mountain Chief’s band of Piegans,
because from some information they had it was supposed that these people
had been plundering and perhaps killing white people. As a matter of
fact, the village found by the troops was that of Red Horn and Bear
Chief. The camp consisted of less than forty lodges, and probably had in
it a little more than two hundred people. The troops got up close to the
village in the gray of the morning, without being seen, and their orders
were to shoot to kill when they fired. There were but few people
stirring when the first volley was fired. They were all killed, and then
the people began to stream out of the lodges. At once they saw that they
were being attacked by troops, and thought that it was a mistake. Bear
Chief, unarmed, rushed toward the soldiers holding up a paper given him
by some white man, but before he got to the soldiers he fell, with half
a dozen bullets through him. The women and children were killed just as
the men were, and of all the village only about forty-five got away, and
some of these were off hunting and were not there when the attack was
made. There were a hundred and seventy-six Indians killed, thirty-seven
of them men, ninety women, and about fifty children.
“There was no pretense of a defense by the Indians. They didn’t fight at
all. They were just shot down until the troops got tired of shooting.
The Indians have told me that most of the thirty-seven men that were
killed were old men and young boys. As if to make it a little rougher on
the Indians, there was smallpox in the camp at the time.
“You’ll see old Almost-a-Dog up at the agency, and if you shake hands
with him you’ll notice that his hand is crooked. He got that wound at
the Baker massacre.”
“Why, Hugh, that’s one of the most terrible things I ever heard of,”
said Jack. “A hundred and seventy-six killed, and out of that a hundred
and forty women and little children!”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “it always seemed to me pretty bad. Of course, when
men go to war or try to steal horses or do anything of that kind they
take all the chances that there are. It’s all right to kill them if you
can, but how anybody that’s got any sense can shoot down women and
children the way that man Baker did gets away with me.
“Well,” he went on, “after a while the news of this massacre drifted
East, and I heard that the newspapers took it up and told the truth
about it, and I reckon the army officers most concerned in it got called
a good many names. I’ve heard that Colonel Baker lost his chance of ever
getting very high up in the army on account of this fight, and yet he
only did just what he was ordered to do.”
“That certainly was terribly cruel,” said Jack, “and I don’t see how it
could be excused.”
“Joe,” said Hugh, turning to the Indian, who had said nothing, but still
lay on the grass with his head resting on his hand, “were you in that
camp, or were you somewhere else?”
“No,” said Joe, “I was not in that camp. My mother was and a little
sister and my father, but I was at Three Sun’s Village, stopping with my
aunt. I must have been about three or four years old at that time.”
“Of the people left alive out of that village,” Hugh went on, “there
were nearly forty who were women and little bits of children. They were
turned loose on the prairie--some of them being sick with the smallpox,
you will remember--on the twenty-third of January. Anybody who knows
what winter weather is up here in Montana can tell what that means. It’s
a wonder that any of them lived to get to a camp where they were looked
after.”
Hugh’s story had taken some time in the telling, and by the time he had
finished it was quite dark. Jack and Joe got up and went out to where
the horses were and changed them to fresh grass, and on their way back
brought the beds from the wagon and threw them down close to the fire.
Hugh meanwhile had put fresh wood on it and the cheerful blaze lit up
the white trunks of the cottonwoods and was reflected on the leaves
above. It was a beautiful night, and the three spread their beds near
the fire and were soon asleep.
CHAPTER III
THE BLACKFOOT AGENCY
The next morning they were early on their way, and by noon reached the
home of a Canadian Frenchman, formerly in the service of the American
Fur Company, but now living on his little ranch on the Teton with his
Indian wife and a numerous brood of half-breed children.
From here they kept on up-stream, until just before night they came to
another ranch, on the Pend d’Oreille coulée, where lived a man whom Hugh
and Joe both addressed as Froggy, also married to an Indian woman.
Just before dark Jack was greatly interested in seeing a procession of
five pin-tailed ducks walking solemnly from a little slough to the
house. When they reached it the woman drove them into a little coop
built of short logs, and closing the door, fastened it with a pin.
“Where did you get your ducks, Froggy?” asked Joe.
“Oh,” answered Froggy, “I found a nest out on the prairie at the edge of
the slough and watched it until the young ones hatched and then got them
and brought them in and raised them. I did have nine, but the coyotes
and foxes got away with all but these five. Now I’ve got ’em trained so
that they come up every night, and I shut them up in the house where
they’ll be safe.”
Shortly after they had started next morning Jack asked Hugh some
questions about Froggy. It appeared that he had come into the country
twelve or fifteen years before and had worked first as a laborer and
afterward as a clerk for small individual traders.
“They say,” put in Joe, “that he has killed two or three men for their
money.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I heard something about that, but nobody that ever
talked to me about it really seemed to know anything.”
“No,” said Joe, “I reckon they never could prove anything against him.
Twice men who were traveling through the country and were supposed to
have money disappeared on this road and nobody ever knew what became of
them. Each time Froggy said that they stopped at his house over night
and then started on in the morning, but they never were seen again.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “we don’t know anything about that.”
“Hugh,” said Jack, “I’ve been a good deal in the Western country and I’m
not a pilgrim any longer, but isn’t something going to happen to Froggy
some of these days?”
“Why, yes, son,” said Hugh, “I reckon some day that somebody will up and
kill Froggy, and then the country will be better off; but it isn’t your
funeral nor yet mine, and we don’t want to mix up with things that don’t
concern us at all.”
“No, Hugh, of course, you’re right, but it does seem as if the world and
the territory would be better off if Froggy did not live here.”
“Maybe, maybe,” said Hugh, “but, as I say, it isn’t your business nor
yet mine.”
That night they camped on Dupuyer Creek, and Hugh and Joe said that
to-morrow they would be at the agency.
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll be glad to get there. It’s queer, isn’t it, the
number of times I’ve been up here and camped with these Piegans that
I’ve never seen their agency, the place which is really their home?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “it really has not been their home very long, only
since the buffalo gave out. Before that they only came in once in a
while, but not long before they saw the last of the buffalo the
Government sent out troops to bring them in and tell them that they must
stay at the agency.
“That’s one reason, I reckon, that they starved, as Joe was telling us
the other night. If it hadn’t been that the troops kept them there, I
believe they’d all have gone up north into Canada and have tried to make
the two other tribes, the Blackfeet and the Bloods, give them help. I
don’t know what help they could have given them, because those people up
there must be just as poor as these down here. They all depended on the
buffalo and they had nothing else. None of them have any idea of
farming, and of course none of them have any cattle.”
“But, Hugh,” said Jack, “what are they going to do now? The buffalo
won’t come back; how are they going to live?”
“Why,” said Hugh, “the only way they can live is for the Government to
support them, to send them out beef and flour and bacon. They’ve got to
be fed until they learn to do something for themselves, either to raise
crops or raise cattle, or get jobs as hands on the steamboats or as
hands for the ranchmen; but, of course, there are not enough ranchmen
in the country to hire even a small part of the able-bodied men among
the Piegans.”
“Well,” said Jack, “they have a pretty melancholy outlook, haven’t
they?”
“They have, it’s true,” Hugh answered. “At the same time,” he went on,
“some of those men are pretty industrious and have a pretty good idea of
work, if they only knew how, but as yet they don’t know anything. Joe
says though--you heard him the other night--that they were trying to
learn to farm, but this country up here is so cold that I don’t think
they can ever do anything with crops. There are a few warm spots where
crops might ripen, but they are very few.”
About noon the next day they drove down into the valley of a little
stream running from the west, and Joe stopped his horses so that they
might drink.
“Well, friend,” he said to Jack, “when we cross this creek we shall be
on the reservation. The Indians have their camps and their cabins up and
down this stream, and from here on, wherever there is a creek, there we
will see the Indians camped. It is only about eight miles from here to
the Agency.”
Most of the way was uphill, however, and it was well on in the afternoon
before the road passed over the high bluff, and at a distance they saw
the agency buildings. These looked gray and inconspicuous, set down in
the midst of a wide flat, through which flowed a stream bordered by
willows, with a few tall cottonwood trees. As they drew nearer, the
buildings seemed to Jack to increase in size, and presently they stopped
at the little one-story trading post, a hundred yards below the Agency,
that now looked like rather an imposing edifice. From here Jack could
see only the stockade, about sixteen feet in height and built of
cottonwood logs, which concealed all the Agency buildings behind its
walls.
At the store they were warmly welcomed by Joe Bruce and his assistant,
Mr. McGonigle. Bruce was, and long had been, one of the characters of
the upper Missouri country. He was then only about thirty-six years old,
smooth-shaven, keen-eyed, thin and wiry. Hugh had often spoken to Jack
about him and Jack looked at him with great interest. He was the son of
James Bruce, who was an important figure in the fur trade of the Upper
Missouri and long in charge of Fort Union at the junction of the
Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, and later of Fort McKenzie and Fort
Brulé, not far from where Fort Benton was built later.
Bruce’s mother was a Mandan, and, as Jack learned a little later, lived
with her son at the Piegan agency.
Mr. McGonigle was a Georgian, an old Confederate soldier who had come
West “with the left wing of Price’s army,” as the saying used to be in
Montana. Of the great number of Southerners that came into Montana in
1862 and ’63 it was said in joke that when Price’s army was defeated in
Missouri in the early part of the war, the left wing got separated from
the others and started westward, and never stopped until it reached the
Rocky Mountains. Mr. McGonigle had spent some years as a prospector, but
after having made and lost several small fortunes, at last became a
trader’s clerk, which he had now been for many years.
After a brief chat with Joe Bruce, arrangements were made to spread
their beds for a night or two in one of his empty buildings, and to live
at his mess until they started on their way again. Joe, whose people
were camped on another creek further to the northward, was to remain at
the Agency for two or three days, and then the whole party would start
for St. Mary’s Lakes.
While Hugh was talking with Bruce, Jack chatted for a while with Mr.
McGonigle, but he was anxious to go up to the Agency and to get inside
that gray barrier of logs behind which were hidden many interesting
people and things.
Presently Hugh filled his pipe, and after lighting it, rose and said,
“Well, son, let’s go on up to the Agency and see the agent, and look
around and see if we can meet any of our friends.”
“All right, Hugh, come on,” said Jack, and they set out.
They soon reached the stockade and entered the wide plank gate, which
was still in good condition and bore signs of being frequently used. On
either side of the gate there were small log buildings, each with a
small window, which looked as if they had been built there for purposes
of defense; probably, however, they were built only in imitation of the
store and warehouse buildings that formerly flanked the gates of all old
fur-trading posts. Once within the stockade, they could see the quarters
for the employees, a warehouse, a schoolhouse in which were gathered ten
or fifteen children, and some other buildings; while in the center of
the stockade stood the house occupied by the agent.
In this house they found Major Allen, who welcomed them cordially, and
in response to inquiries by Hugh told them something of the terrible
conditions that he had found when he had reached there a year or more
before and had first met his starving people. He talked with much
feeling about their sufferings and the heroic way in which they had
borne them, and while he said nothing in definite terms about his
predecessor, what his words suggested made Jack’s blood boil with
indignation. Major Allen asked Hugh and the boys to stay at the Agency
as long as they liked, and said that he would like to have them see the
Indians at work.
When Hugh and Jack went up to the Agency the next morning they saw in
the field just below the stockade a number of Indians standing about a
team of horses, and as they drew nearer they could see that Major Allen
was giving instructions in the art of plowing to some of the people.
When they reached the group, they were busy for some time shaking hands
with old friends, whom they had known under far different circumstances,
but after the first salutations all turned to watch the work.
A half breed was driving the team hitched to a plow, and the agent was
trying to teach the Indians to hold the plow so as to turn a straight
furrow. It was new and not easy work for the red men. The handles of the
plow jerked from side to side, the point either coming out of the ground
or plunging so deeply into it that the man holding the handles was in
danger of being thrown forward on his head. Then Major Allen would take
the plow and holding it steadily would cut a smooth furrow of even
depth.
Old White Calf, the chief, was anxious to learn plowing. He took hold
of the handles and, although at first the plow wobbled from side to side
and more than once one of the handles struck him viciously in the ribs,
he cut a fair furrow for six or eight feet. Then, however, the point ran
deep into the ground, and the old man was thrown forward and nearly fell
down. Meanwhile, the Indians who were looking on were making jocular
remarks and poking fun at the man who happened to be plowing, but
he--after he had performed his small stint--had his revenge by making
fun of the next victim.
After he had watched them for a little while and enjoyed the fun, Jack
had a chance to look on a scene picturesque and beautiful. The wide
valley stretched before him with bluffs rising in terraces one after
another, the bright green of the willows and cottonwoods marking the
course of the stream; to the west the mountains with their clear-cut
outlines sharply defined against the blue sky; the gray stockade stood
near at hand, and farther off the conical white lodges of the Piegans up
and down the creek, with here and there a low log cabin. Outside the
fence Indians passed to and fro, some of them on foot, others on
horseback, and their bright-colored blankets, beaded belts and knife
sheaths gave life and color to the picture.
For some time the work went on, and then the Major asked Hugh and Jack
to come up to his house, where they talked over the Indians and the new
problems which they had to face.
“It’s interesting work looking after these people, but it’s
discouraging, too,” said Major Allen. “The Indians are willing to work,
but they haven’t any idea how to perform the tasks we set them, so that
their efforts are ineffective, and they easily become discouraged. They
have never been used to handling horses hitched to wagons, and they
don’t know at all what horses can do. They hitch these little riding
ponies of theirs to a big wagon and then pile it up with much more of a
load than the horses can haul, and whip up the team, which strains and
tugs along for a short distance, but presently gives out, and the wagon
has to be unloaded or else another pair or two of horses must be
attached to it.
“The Indians are as willing as can be and they are not afraid of work,
but they don’t like to keep at it for a long time. They are absolutely
ignorant of all farming matters and it will take them some time to
learn. Last summer some of them planted little gardens, but they treated
them as children would. For example, they often dug up their potatoes to
see how fast they were growing, and as soon as they grew large enough to
eat they tried to sell them, although if they had left them in the
ground they would have continued to grow for a month longer. Now that
the Indians have teams and are beginning to learn something about how to
use them, they drive up to the mountains and cut wood and haul it down,
either to sell or to use themselves in winter. Some of them have built
good log cabins in which they pass the winter, but of course in summer
they prefer to live in their lodges.”
“Well, Major,” said Hugh, “you can hardly expect these Indians, who all
their lives have been chasing buffalo, to take hold of work at once.”
“No,” said the Major, “that can’t be expected, and I don’t look for it.
I am very well satisfied with the way they have taken hold. They’re
willing and they seem honest.”
“Yes, I think so,” said Hugh, “and from what I can hear they’ve had such
a hard time that I think they’re really in earnest in their wish to
learn how to work.”
“Their loyalty,” said the Major, “is one of the things that has struck
me the most. The policemen are absolutely faithful. When I enlist them,
I make them take an oath, explaining that everybody who serves the
Government has to be sworn in, and that they must do as all the other
public servants. They take an oath which I like, though perhaps not a
very ceremonial one; still they take it as if they meant it, and I
believe they do. Have you ever heard them make this oath, Mr. Johnson?”
“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t reckon I have. I would like to hear it, and so
would son here. What is it?”
“When they are sworn,” said Major Allen, “they lift up the right hand
and, stretching it toward the sky, say, ‘The sun is good,’ and then,
‘The earth is good,’ and bending down they touch the ground with the
hand; and as they stand up again they say, ‘I will obey the orders of my
chief, that I may live long with my family.’
“Now these policemen get only eight dollars a month; they’re likely to
be called on at any time to ride any distance; they have to furnish
their own horses, and yet they never, so far as I have heard, complain.
They’re a good lot of people, and I ask for nothing better than to stay
here and work with them, but I hope that I shall never have as bad a
time as I had when they were starving during the first two or three
months that I was here.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “that must have been a terrible time.”
As they were walking down to the trader’s store, Jack, who had been much
impressed by Major Allen’s talk about the Indians, said to Hugh, “Now,
Hugh, what do you think will become of these Indians? Of course, the
buffalo never can come back, so hunting days must be nearly over. How
are the people to support themselves, or are they to be looked after in
future by the Government?”
“Why, son,” said Hugh, “I guess that question is puzzling, and it’s
going to puzzle a lot of smarter men than you and I will ever be. It’s a
sure thing that these Indians can never make a living in this country by
farming. They might make a living by cattle if they had any, or had any
means of getting them, but of course the Indians have no money and no
means of earning any money to buy cattle with. They certainly can’t hire
out to work, because there is no one in this country that will hire them
and pay wages. If they had cattle and would take care of them they might
do well, because this is one of the finest grazing ranges in the world,
but you know very well that if the Government were to give each one of
these Indians a cow to-morrow, a week hence very few of them would still
have his cow. They would kill them and eat them, and then sit around and
hope that the Government would give them another. They have got to have
a lot of instruction before they will look out for the future.”
“Well,” said Jack, “you can’t blame them. In the past when they wanted
food they went out and killed something, and they can’t be expected to
understand that things are changing.”
“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t expect it of them, but if they don’t come to
understand it very soon they will have to suffer again just what they
suffered two years ago.”
“Well,” said Jack, “it’s mighty hard lines; it’s heartbreaking to think
of.”
“So it is,” said Hugh. “I feel mighty badly whenever I think of it, but
I reckon it’s the law. I expect the white people had to go through an
awful lot of suffering before they got to the point where ‘most every
man realized that he had to work hard for a living, and I reckon if you
look around back where you live you’ll find that there are a good many
people in those big cities there that don’t realize this yet.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I suppose there are, but these Indians are so kindly
and generous and hospitable that I feel a personal sympathy for each one
of them that, of course, I don’t feel for the inefficient people back
East.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “that’s natural, of course. You know these people and
you don’t know the others.”
Soon after they got back to the trader’s store dinner was ready, and
after dinner they lounged about the store talking with Bruce.
CHAPTER IV
A MEDICINE PIPE CEREMONY
Toward the middle of the afternoon a wagon drove up to the store and
Bruce’s wife, carrying a baby, came out and got in and said a few words
to her husband. He rose and walked toward the wagon and then turned and
said, “I’m just going over with the woman to Red Eagle’s camp; the
baby’s been sick and she wants to have him doctor it. He’s going to
unwrap his medicine pipe. Do you men want to go along? I don’t know if
Jack has ever seen a medicine pipe unwrapped.”
“No,” said Hugh, “I reckon he hasn’t. What do you say, son? Do you want
to go?”
“You bet, Hugh,” said Jack. “I’d be mighty glad to go. We won’t be in
the way, will we, Mr. Bruce?”
“No,” said Bruce, “not a bit. Come along.”
It was not a long drive over to Two Medicine Lodge Creek. Red Eagle was
camped not far from the old piskun, where in old times the Blackfeet
used to drive the buffalo over the cliff, where the fall from the great
height killed or crippled many of the herd and gave the people food. As
the wagon drove up to Red Eagle’s lodge, it was surrounded by a pack of
dogs which, with furious barkings and snappings, threatened the
visitors, but when no attention was paid to them they quieted down at
once, and stood about with welcoming waggings of their tails. Mrs. Bruce
climbed out of the wagon and carrying her baby, some food and tobacco
and a large sack of dried sarvis berries, entered the old man’s lodge,
while the men drove the wagon off a little distance, unhitched the
horses and tied them to the wagon wheels. Returning to the lodge, Bruce
looked in and said, “The old man hasn’t begun to get ready yet. We may
as well stop outside until he is ready to begin.”
“Let’s go up to the cliff, son,” said Hugh, “and see where the people
used to kill buffalo.”
The three walked over to the almost vertical bluffs which rose sixty or
eighty feet above the valley. Here the ground was strewn with weathered
bones of which the soil itself seemed partly composed, for it was filled
with minute fragments of the bones and teeth of buffalo.
“Now, son,” said Hugh, “this is a sacred place to the Indians. They used
to make medicine here and perform ceremonies to bring the buffalo up on
the prairie near here, so that they could lead them over the cliff. You
see that pile of horns over there?” and he pointed to a great heap of
horn sheaths of the buffalo, as big as a hay-cock. There must have been
more than a thousand horn sheaths in it.
Jack looked at it in astonishment, for it was something the like of
which he had never seen.
“Although they have not used this place now for many years, the Indians
still try to keep up that pile of horns, and whenever it is blown down
or knocked over by the horses they heap it up again. In old times there
were arranged in certain places on the ground a lot of horns all
directed the same way, that is, with the points of the horns pointing
the way they wanted the buffalo to run. Some of the horns were those of
bulls and some of cows. That meant that they wanted bulls as well as
cows to fall over the cliff. They used to lead the buffalo up to the
cliff, and fix things so that they would be running fast when they got
to the edge of the cliff. The leaders might perhaps try to stop, but
they could not stop because those behind pushed them along and shoved
them over. Those that were behind could not see what was in front of the
leaders and kept running until they got to the edge of the cliff and
then they went over. The fall killed some of the buffalo and crippled
others. Besides that, there was a big pen built about the place where
the buffalo fell down; a fence made of stones and logs and brush, and
women and children and men were hidden all about it. As soon as the
buffalo came tumbling down, these people showed themselves all around
the fence, frightening the buffalo, so that those that were still able
to travel, instead of trying to run on, simply ran around in a circle
inside the fence. Then the men killed them with arrows, and after all
were dead the women went into the pen and skinned the buffalo and took
away the meat, and then the skulls and most of the big bones were
carried off to a distance and the pen cleaned up for the next drive.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ve heard about this jumping the buffalo over the
cut bank and catching them in pens, but I never supposed that I would
see the place where it had been done.”
“Well,” said Mr. Bruce, “this is sure one of the places and you don’t
need anybody to tell you so, because you can look around and see the
bones of the buffalo all about you.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “that’s so; the place speaks for itself.”
“There are lots of old-time things hidden in this ground that we are
standing on,” said Bruce; “old arrow points and knives and fleshers, and
maybe other tools. Once in a while some of these things are found, but
most of them are covered up by the wash that comes down from the cliff.
Old Black Coming In Sight Over The Hill, who lives right above here, has
found lots of arrow points. A couple of years ago he showed me a double
handful that he had picked up, and also a bone flesher made from the
cannon bone of a buffalo. There are a good many other places like this.
One of them is up on Sun River, and from that Louis Pambrun got a knife
made of that black rock that looks like glass, and a stone ax and a lot
of stone flesher points and, oh, a whole mess of stuff.”
“My,” said Jack, “wouldn’t I like to see some of those things that have
come from one of these places. It surely seems as if it would make the
whole business of killing buffalo in the old-time fashion mighty real to
one.”
“Well,” said Bruce, “we’ll try and look around and see if we can’t get
hold of something of that kind for you before you go.”
After a little more examination of the bluffs, the three returned to Red
Eagle’s lodge. The preparations for the ceremony were not yet completed
and all sat down near the lodge, and while the two elder men smoked,
Jack looked about him and tried to make friends with the little children
who were racing about playing their games. One little fellow only about
two years of age quite won Jack’s heart by his friendly smile and
evident lack of fear. His clothing consisted of several strings of
beads, a buckskin string about his neck, to which was attached a stone
charm, and a very short shirt which came down to his lower ribs. He had
been playing in the stream or in some half-dried puddle, and the lower
part of his person was covered by a thick coating of mud. The little
fellow marched up to Jack in a confident way, shook hands with him in a
matter-of-fact fashion and clambered up on his knee, and after looking
at Jack’s clothing and buttons and listening to the ticking of his
watch, sat perfectly still watching the doings of his fellows. The
children were amusing themselves by making miserable the lives of the
dogs. When they found a dog sleeping somewhere or playing near them,
they would creep up to it and beat it with long twigs and pieces of wood
until the dog ran away into the brush with melancholy howlings, which
seemed to delight the young Indians.
At length a woman’s voice called from the lodge, and Bruce and Hugh rose
and passed in, Jack following. A number of Indians were seated around
the fire, but Red Eagle, the principal personage, sat at the back of the
lodge with the fire between himself and the door. At his left was an
unoccupied space, to which the three newcomers were motioned. To the
left of the doorway, in the women’s place, sat several women, some of
whom had babies either on their backs or between their knees. To the
right of Red Eagle was his wife and assistant, the Bear Woman.
Red Eagle was a large, fine-looking man of majestic presence. His
massive face, kindly and benignant in expression, was framed in long
gray hair which hung down over his broad shoulders. He was one of the
oldest men in the tribe, and was blind.
After Hugh and the others had seated themselves, there was a little
pause, and then the Bear Woman took up a dried willow branch, which had
two parallel twigs close together, serving for a pair of tongs, and
lifted from the fire a live coal, which she placed on the ground before
the Bear Man, who then began to sing a low, monotonous chant in a minor
key, in which all the other Indians soon joined. While singing, the old
man interrupted himself at intervals to exclaim _ni-ai_, (my shelter or
covering), the other Indians keeping up the singing. After a few moments
he reached his hand under the robe on which he was sitting and drew out
a small pouch, which he passed to the Bear Woman. She slowly untied it
and took from it a pinch of the dried needles of the sweet pine, which
she held over the coal. Then the Bear Man sang four times, and as the
music rose and fell the Bear Woman’s hand rose and fell over the coal.
At the end of the fourth song Red Eagle stretched out his hand and made
a downward gesture, and the Bear Woman let fall the incense on the coal,
and immediately the fragrant perfume of the burning pine needles filled
the lodge. The singing continued a little longer and then stopped. Then
both Red Eagle and his assistant stretched out their hands over the
smoke of the burning sweet pine, rubbed them together, and then, seeming
to grasp some of the smoke in their hands, rubbed it over their heads
and forearms, and reaching out and grasping more of it, passed it over
their heads, shoulders, and upper arms. They also seemed to take
handfuls of the smoke and eat it or breathe it in, the idea being that
they were purifying themselves without and within. Then presently the
Bear Man turned his face toward the sun and began to pray. Some portion
of what he said Jack could understand, but afterward he asked Bruce to
interpret the prayer, and this is what it was:
“Hear Above People, hear Thunder, those Animals [meaning his secret
helpers or medicine animals], hear. Pity us, pity us. Let us live, let
us live. Give us full life. Let us grow to be old. Listen. Crow Arrow,
let him live. In his wandering about let no danger befall him from bad
beasts or dangers that are on the trail. Let his wife and his boy, this
child with the shining hair, live to be very old and let them have
plenty of everything. Let White Bull live, keep him when he is
traveling, protect him from all dangers, from perils from animals, and
from all dangers on the trail. Let his relations live and have
abundance, and White Warrior, let him live, care for him and keep him
safe from dangers, wherever he may be. All people let live. O Creator,
have pity on the people so that they may live well, free from danger!”
Then he turned his face and appeared to address the bundle hung on the
lodge poles behind him containing the pipe: “Oh, tell them to have pity
on us. Let the young people grow, increase their flesh. Let all men,
women, and children have full life. Harden the bodies of old people so
that they may reach great age.”
The prayer ended and all the people gave a long-drawn _ah-h-h-h_,
meaning yes, about the equivalent of our amen.
Jack sat spellbound as he watched the old man while he prayed. Here,
indeed, was a priest who really wished for what he was asking. Here was
one who threw himself on the mercy of his God and would not let Him go.
He implored, he urged, he insisted, and would not be denied, and as Jack
saw the great beads of sweat stand out on the old man’s brow his memory
went back to one of his Sunday-school lessons of long ago, and he
thought of a struggle told of in the Bible, when at the ford Jabbock,
another patriarch, wrestled through the long night with his God and
prevailed.
But Jack had little time to think about this, for now the singing was
resumed; Red Eagle starting it as before, the others after a little time
joining in the plaintive refrain. Again the Bear Woman sprinkled sweet
pine on the coal, and again the priest and priestess purified themselves
by passing the smoke over their arms, heads, and bodies. Then they
seemed again to take handfuls of it and to hold the smoke under the
large package tied to the lodge poles above them. Presently, as the
singing continued, the Bear Woman rose to her knees and very slowly and
reverently untied the package from the poles and placed it on the robe
between the Bear Man and herself.
Now Red Eagle began a new song, and after he and the woman had again
passed their hands through the smoke, they moved them over the bundle,
raising them alternately in time to the music. At first the hands were
closed, except the forefinger, which pointed straight out, and the
up-and-down motions were quick and sharp, representing the dainty rise
and fall of the feet of the antelope as it walks. Then, at a change in
the air, the fingers were all bent, but the hand not closed, and the
up-and-down motions became deliberate and heavy, representing the slow
tread of a walking bear. At another change the old man raised his hands,
partly closed, the forefinger extended, pointing upward and slightly
bent inward, to the side of his head, and moving his face this way and
that, as if looking about him, called out in a shrill voice, _Hoo_. The
hand sign meant buffalo and the motion of the head signified looking or
watching. This sign, as Bruce afterward explained to Jack, was related
to the word _ni-ai_, so often used in the songs, meaning my shelter, my
covering, my robe; for the shelter, covering, or robe of these Indians
is made from the buffalo.
Again the air of the song changed, and the priest and his wife holding
their hands palm downward, all the fingers extended forward, moved them
up and down, making the sign for walking, which represented going to
war, and the sign for danger or watchfulness, the forefingers pointed
straight up and held at the side of the head, like a pricked ear, with a
startled expression of countenance and a watchful look.
After this song was ended, Red Eagle began slowly and carefully to
remove the wrappings from the package at his side, but he still sang,
though the air was again changed to a slower, more monotonous chant.
After the strings had been untied from the double-mouthed red cloth sack
which formed the outer covering of the package, he drew from it a long
bundle, wrapped in cloths of various colors. One by one he took off
these cloths, until, after many had been removed, the medicine pipe was
revealed. It was a handsome pipe stem about four feet long, wrapped for
a part of its length with large showy beads and profusely ornamented
with ermine skins and tails and with the feathers of eagles and other
birds, which hung from it in thick bunches. Near the lower or pipe end
of the stem was a separate plume made of twelve tail feathers of the war
eagle, each having its extremity wrapped with red or yellow horse hair,
which hung down in a long tuft. The whole stem was handsome and heavy.
After the covering had been removed, the old man bent for a moment in
silence over the pipe, and then raised it slowly and tenderly to his
face, making a soft, cooing, caressing sound. He pressed it to his lips
and whispered to it, while he raised his sightless eyes toward the sun,
as if he could look through their veil and through the lodge covering
and see some being invisible to others. After a few moments’ silence he
again spoke to the pipe in a low voice, and passed it over his arms,
shoulders, and both sides of his head. Then he began the song again,
shaking the pipe in time to the music. When he had finished he again
prayed, and said, “O Sun, O Moon and Stars, pity us, pity us. Look
down.” Then followed again the substance of the first prayer, and he
ended with the petition for men who were now away on the warpath,
saying, “Little Plume, let him survive. Tearing Lodge and Double Rider,
let them survive and return, bringing the heads.” Then turning, he
passed the pipe to Hugh, who held it before his face and bent his head.
Then it went to Jack, who imitated Hugh. Then Bruce took it and made a
prayer, and from him it passed to an old blind warrior, who prayed long
and fervently, and so it went around the circle, each one who received
it making a prayer. Jack listened hard to try to hear what the
different people said, but they spoke in low tones, and only now and
then could he catch a word: _Kĭm´-o-kĭt_ (have pity); _nā´pi_
(old man), or _na-tōs´_ (sun). When the pipe went back around the
circle to the other side of the lodge, where were the women and their
little babies, the women prayed as they took it and then passed the pipe
stem over the bodies and heads of their little ones, believing that the
sacred influence would benefit the children.
Meanwhile, Red Eagle had taken up a medicine rattle and again began to
sing, shaking the rattle in time to the music. When at length the pipe
returned to him he put down his rattle, took the stem and repeated
rapidly a number of times the words, “Pity us, pity us, pity us.” Then,
putting the stem on the robe between himself and his wife, he rose,
began a new song and began to dance, first to the east, and then turning
about toward the west. The people sitting in the lodge accompanied him
in a melodious but plaintive minor chant. Presently he stopped dancing,
faced about, and, sitting down, prayed again, concluding with these
words, “Let the Sun shine upon us and our lives be without shadows.”
Then he made a sign that the ceremony was over, and all rose and filed
out of the lodge.
Jack was mightily impressed by the ceremony that he had just witnessed,
yet, though he was anxious to ask many questions, he hardly felt like
doing so of Bruce, especially in the presence of his wife, whose faith
in the religion of which the old man was the priest he supposed to be
strong. It was not until after they had got back to the Agency,
therefore, that he said very much about it.
Before supper, however, he had an opportunity to speak to Hugh, and to
ask him some questions about the religion of these Indians.
“That is one of the most solemn things I ever saw, Hugh,” he said, “and
I want to ask some questions about it. I don’t know if I ever told you
how I felt that time when Last Bull gave me my name and prayed over me.
Of course that was two or three years ago, and I was a good deal younger
then than I am now; but I never before had had anything make me feel as
solemn as that prayer did, and that’s just the way I felt to-day when
Red Eagle was praying. It seems to me that when these Indians pray, they
pray as if they meant what they were saying. They seem to be in earnest
about it. Now, when I hear a white man praying,--that is, most white
men, I don’t mean to say it’s the same with all,--they don’t seem to be
in earnest; they seem to be going through a sort of form. Did you notice
how the sweat stood out on that old man’s face when he was making his
prayer; how solemn he was, and how he acted just as if he were begging
somebody for something?”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I noticed that, and it’s so that when these Indians
pray they are surely in earnest. They are not getting off something that
they’ve learned by heart and just saying it because they have to; they
mean all that they say and they are really asking favors. People say
that they’re nothing but poor savages and that they’re pagans, and all
that, but I tell you when they’re talking to their God they could give
points to a whole lot of white folks.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ve seen some Indians pray, and I’ve been present
at some ceremonies, like the medicine lodge and like opening the beaver
bundle, but I never saw anything that seemed to me as real as this that
we’ve seen to-day.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “I am right glad we went, and I’m glad that you saw
it. These Indians and all the other Indians that I know anything about
are changing mighty fast. They’re losing their old ways and picking up
new ones that are not half so good. They’re changing all the time, and
before you are many years older you won’t be able to see any of these
old-time ways. There are three or four railroads now running across
through the country that used to belong all to the Indians, and now that
the buffalo are about gone they’ve got to come on to their reservations
and learn to work to earn a living, and just as soon as they do that
you’ll see all the old customs go, and when they once go they’ll very
soon be forgotten.”
“But what a pity it is, Hugh,” said Jack, “that they’ve got to change!
Why can’t they be left out here to live their life in the old way?”
“Why, son,” said Hugh, “you are talking now without thinking, talking
just as I have felt a great many times; but you know and I know from
what we’ve both seen that before very long these people are all going to
be crowded out of the most of this country by the white folks. Don’t you
remember a couple of years ago when we came back from the coast, how the
little towns were springing up all along the new railroad that they were
building, and now that the railroad has been finished, all along it,
east and west, there are growing up settlements of people that will soon
be towns. The white people are coming in crowds, and as soon as they’ve
taken all the best locations along the railroad they’ll begin to spread
out and take up other locations, and I believe that I’ll live long
enough to see this Montana Territory full of people. It’ll be here just
as I’ve seen it happen in the South. First the cattle will come into the
country, lots of them, and for a while it will be all cows and cowboys;
and then, little by little, the ranchers will come in, and they’ll
settle first on one creek bottom and then on another, and then maybe
mines will be found in the mountains, and new railroads will be built,
and at last there won’t be room in the country for anybody but white
folks that are working hard to make money out of the prairie and the
river bottoms, and even out of the mountains. A few years ago I wouldn’t
have believed it, but I have seen it happen now in lots of different
parts of the country, and I reckon it will happen here, just as it has
in so many other places.”
“Well, Hugh,” said Jack, “I suppose that’s so. I remember, as you say,
the way the settlements were springing up along the new railroad when we
came back from British Columbia, and this time, coming out, I could see
the little towns starting all along the Northern Pacific, back in
Minnesota and west of there, but it does seem awfully rough that these
Indians should all be driven from their own land and should have to be
penned up on a little reservation. And I don’t see what in the world
they’re going to do to live unless the Government feeds them.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t either. I suppose maybe some time they’ll
have to turn into cattlemen. I always had an idea they’d make good cow
hands, if they could be taught to look after cattle. Certainly the
Indians used to take awful good care of their ponies, and if they could
be taught to take good care of cows, they could make a good living just
as long as they’ve got the range that most any reservation will furnish.
You know the Navahoes down South and some others of those Southern
Indians have big herds of sheep and take pretty good care of them, but
of course sheep and cattle are different things.”
That evening in the store Hugh asked Bruce what he thought of the
probability of the Indians taking to cattle-raising.
“Why,” said Bruce, “they could make good cowmen if they’d look after the
stock. This is one of the greatest cattle ranges in the whole country,
and the few cattle that I own have done mighty well. I have had two
Indians, my brothers-in-law, looking after the stock, and they are
getting to understand how to handle cattle well. But the trouble is that
the average Indian hasn’t much feeling of responsibility, and instead of
spending the day on his horse looking after the cattle, he’s likely to
get off and lie down in the sun and sleep for half a day and let the
stock get away from him. They haven’t yet got any idea of the importance
of staying with a job. They’ll work hard until they get tired of it, and
then they’ll stop, and you can’t start them up again. You see, they’ve
never been used to working steadily. They’d work as long as they felt
like it, and then stop. That’s what they’ve got to learn before they can
accomplish anything toward making a living. They’ve got to learn the
lesson of steady, continued effort, and it’s going to be mighty hard to
teach them that.”
Late in the evening Hugh said to Jack, “Well, son, we’ve seen about all
we need to around here, haven’t we? What do you say to our starting out
to the mountains to make our trip?”
“Why,” said Jack, “I’m ready, and I don’t see why we can’t go off right
away.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “the sooner we get off the better it will suit me,
and if you feel like it, we’ll get hold of Joe to-morrow and pack up our
stuff and start. I reckon we can have a good time up at the lakes
hunting around there. You see, nobody’s ever been up to the heads of any
of those rivers, and I’d like to go up there and see what there is, and
I reckon you would, too.”
“Sure, I would,” said Jack.
“All right,” said Hugh, “let’s get hold of Joe to-morrow, and maybe
we’ll start the next day. I don’t think there’s anything to keep us
here.”
CHAPTER V
OFF FOR THE MOUNTAINS
When Joe appeared early the next morning he was at once sent off to get
the horses. Jack went with him, and an hour or two later the wagon, two
saddle horses, and three loose animals were standing in front of the
trading store. Beds, provisions, pack saddles, and a tent were soon
loaded into the wagon, and before very long the party pulled out across
Badger Creek, above the stockade, and climbed the hills toward the
north. Hugh and Joe rode in the wagon, while Jack drove the loose horses
ahead of it. For some distance there was a road which was partly wagon
road and partly old travois trail, but gradually the track became more
and more dim, and soon Jack found himself riding over the unmarked
prairie. Before this, however, they crossed Two Medicine Lodge River,
just below Old Red Eagle’s camp, and climbed the high hill on the other
side and saw before them the wide, undulating prairie and pinnacled
mountains to the northwest. After reaching substantially level ground
Jack pulled up, and when the wagon overtook him asked Joe, “Which way do
we go from here on, Joe?”
“Well,” said Joe, “keep pretty well off to your left, riding pretty
nearly straight for that pointed mountain that you see over there, the
one away to the left of Chief Mountain.”
“Oh,” asked Jack, “is that Chief Mountain that we see sticking up there
like a finger off to the north?”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that’s it, the last mountain to the right. But you
want to keep off to the left, and in three or four hours you’ll come to
a big wide valley with a good-sized river running through it. I reckon
we’d better camp there, hadn’t we, White Bull?” he asked, turning to
Hugh.
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s a good place. We can’t get on as far as Milk
River to-night; in fact, we’ll do well if we get up to the head of it
to-morrow.”
“All right,” said Jack, “I’ll go on. I don’t believe you will be far
behind me, anyhow.”
“No,” said Joe, “we’ll be pretty close to you. There’s a big flat in the
valley we’re going to and some timber at the upper end, and we’ll camp
there. Maybe you’ll see some of the people there, too. Cross Guns often
camps up at the head of that flat.”
For several hours Jack trotted briskly along over the prairie, keeping
the horses well together ahead of him. They drove very nicely and gave
him little trouble. He was surprised and pleased to find how easy riding
seemed, for it was nearly a year since he had been on a horse. It was
pleasant under the bright warm sun, with the fragrance of the sage brush
in his nostrils, the green swells of the prairie on either side, the
beautiful flowers showing everywhere, and the air full of the sweet
songs of prairie birds.
As he rode over a hill about the middle of the afternoon he saw before
him a wide valley, through which ran a considerable stream, with large
cottonwoods and low willows marking its course at various points, and
turning a little more to the left he pushed the horses down the hills,
and at length came out on a wide grassy bottom. Still to the left there
was a grove of tall cottonwood trees, among which shone two or three
white lodges, and he rode up toward them, slackening his pace as he did
so. The horses that he was driving at once began to feed, and looking
back he saw the wagon coming into sight on the crest of the bluffs that
he had just left. Leaving the horses to feed, he galloped to the timber
where the lodges stood, and rode up to one of them.
At the fierce barkings of the dogs, a woman put her head out of a door,
and when she saw Jack, put her hand quickly over her mouth in surprise,
and then spoke to someone in the lodge, and a moment later Cross Guns
came through the door, and walking up to Jack shook hands with him very
cordially. By means of signs and broken Piegan the two held a short
conversation, and then, as Cross Guns saw the wagon approaching, he
signed to Jack to go and tell his friends to come up and camp here, and
Jack, riding off, delivered the message to Hugh and Joe, and then
brought the loose horses close to the lodge. Meanwhile Cross Guns had
had one of his lodges cleared and a fire built in it, so that the three
men at once moved into a house, and thus were spared the labor of
putting up their tent. It was a fine, new buffalo skin lodge; perhaps
the lightest, warmest, and most comfortable portable shelter ever
devised by any people.
After the horses had been turned out and put in charge of Cross Guns’
young nephew, who took them off and turned them out with Cross Guns’
herd, the wife of their host came in and cooked supper for them, while
the others lounged comfortably about on the beds with their feet toward
the fire and talked.
“Who is Cross Guns, Hugh?” whispered Jack. “I know his face perfectly
well, but I don’t remember where I’ve seen him, nor who his relations
are.”
“Why,” said Hugh, “don’t you know? He’s one of the sons of Old White
Calf and a brother of Wolf Tail. Old White Calf is the chief now, and a
good old man, always thinking about what he can do for his people.”
“Of course,” said Jack, “I know White Calf perfectly well, and I know
what a good man he is, but I had forgotten that Cross Guns is his son.”
“And this woman here,” said Hugh, “do you know who she is?”
“No,” said Jack, “I don’t. I’ve seen her before, too, and she’s a mighty
pleasant-faced woman, but I don’t know her.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “you wouldn’t think it to look at her, but she’s a
granddaughter of one of the chief factors of the Hudson’s Bay Company
about a hundred years ago. Old James Bull came over here, I reckon,
about 1775, and after working for the Hudson’s Bay Company for a while
he became one of the chief factors. He married a Piegan woman, and his
son, Jim Bull, is living here yet. I reckon he must be about ninety
years old. This woman is a daughter of Jim Bull. I reckon you never saw
him. He’s a queer old chap, mighty religious nowadays, but they tell
great stories about him in old times, about how wild he was. They say he
used to go off on the warpath with the Blackfeet and fight the white
traders, run off their horses, and of course kill the men when he could.
Of course I don’t know whether these stories are true or not, but one of
them is that one time he met a party of traders and trappers and the
Blackfeet attacked them and were driven off. The fur traders were on one
side of the river and the Blackfeet on the other, and after the fight
was over Jim Bull, they say, came to the edge of the stream and called
across to the fur traders, saying that he was a white man and wanted to
make peace. He wanted to know if one of them wouldn’t cross over and
talk it over with him. There was some talk among the white men as to
whether it would be safe to do this, but finally one of them said he’d
go over, and did so. The trader went over, and he and Bull sat down and
smoked and talked about making peace and what a pity it was to fight and
all that sort of thing, and then presently, while they were sitting
there smoking, Jim Bull pulled out a pistol and killed the white man and
scalped him and gave the war-cry and went off.
“Another time, according to the story, he went into camp dressed up like
a Canadian engagé, that is, with a blanket coat, and so on, and told the
man that was on guard over the horses that he was ordered to turn them
out to feed. They were let go and scattered about feeding, and presently
a party of Blackfeet that were hidden near by rounded them up and took
them all off, and Bull went with them. He got to be so mean after a
while that they say that one of the head men of one of these trapping
outfits offered five hundred dollars for Bull’s head. Of course, he’s an
old man now, and he gave up all these boy’s tricks a good many years
ago. As I say, now he’s mighty religious. He had a Piegan woman and
quite a number of children here in the country; pretty smart, too, all
of them are.”
After supper was over Hugh said to Jack, “Now, son, there are quite a
lot of trout in the creek there, and if you want to help out our
breakfast you might go out and try to catch some.”
“A good idea, Hugh; I’ll do it,” and Jack jointed his rod and spent an
hour or two fishing. The trout did not seem to care much for his flies,
and at last he substituted for them a plain hook, which he baited with a
grasshopper. With grasshoppers for bait, he caught about a dozen fish,
none of them large, but enough to provide a breakfast for the party.
It was about sunset when he returned, and when Hugh saw his catch he
said, “That’s good; those little trout are going to taste mighty well
to-morrow morning, but give them to me and I’ll go out and dress them
now. You know these Indians won’t eat fish nor anything that lives in
the water, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Cross Guns’ wife should
refuse to cook them. We may have to fry them ourselves to-morrow
morning.”
It was full daylight before camp was astir, and the sun was sending long
level beams from the eastern sky when Jack went out of the lodge and
down to the stream to wash. When he returned Hugh was frying the fish,
having thought that he had better get that done rather than to take the
chance of Cross Guns’ wife refusing to do it. A little later the horses
were brought in, and, soon after, bidding their host and hostess
good-by, they started on toward the mountains.
As Jack drove his horse across the different channels of the river,
which here cut the bottom up into a number of small, gravelly islands,
he started a mother hooded merganser and her brood of tiny young from
one of the banks, and was interested to see the speed with which they
swam and dived to get out of reach. The trees and the prairie were alive
with birds, and in a tall cottonwood he saw a great hawk’s nest, near
which one of the parent birds was perched. As he rode up out of the
bottom on to the higher prairie, he began to see the wall of mountains
on the left, now much nearer than it had seemed when he had started the
day before.
During that day’s ride no large animals had been seen. Scattered over
the prairie at frequent intervals were the white bones of buffalo killed
long ago, but no quadruped larger than a prairie dog or a cotton-tail
showed itself.
Through the day, as he rode along, the country became more and more
broken; the small streams which he crossed flowed at the bottom of deep
valleys walled in by high, steep bluffs, and the pines and spruces of
the mountains seemed to be coming closer and closer to him. At length,
after descending the long hill, he found himself in the bottom of a
rather large stream, and remembering Joe’s directions, turned to the
left and followed it up toward the mountains. At length it forked, and
at first he could not determine which branch of the stream to take, so
he stopped, got off his horse, and waited for the wagon to come up.
Presently he saw it coming down the hill, driving toward him. Just
before it reached him he saw, a mile or two above him on the river,
several large animals hurrying down the bluff. The distance was so great
that he could not tell what they were, but thought they acted like
horses. After the wagon had come up and he had learned which way they
were going, he mounted to go on, and just as he did so a bunch of about
twenty horses, herded by two men, burst out of the brush a mile ahead of
the wagon, dashed across the wide bottom and up the bluffs on the north
side of the valley.
“What do you make of that, Hugh?” asked Jack.
“Well, I don’t know, son,” said Hugh. “It looks as if there were a
couple of men there that wanted to get away and not be seen. What do you
think, Joe? Are any of the people camped up in this direction?”
“I guess not,” said Joe. “I think maybe those men have been stealing
horses and don’t want anybody to see them.”
“That’s the way it looks to me,” said Hugh. “But where have the horses
been taken from? We don’t know and I reckon it’s no business of ours,
and we’d better go right along.”
“I guess they saw us coming a long way off, Hugh,” said Jack. “Only a
little while ago I saw some of those horses come down the bluffs, away
above where they came out of the bottom just now. The men must have seen
me coming and begun to gather up their horses and then start them on to
get out of the way.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “it’s no business of ours. We’d better keep on and
attend to our own affairs. Of course, if we knew who these horses had
been taken from it would be different; but it isn’t like it was with us
that year when we came down through the Park and had to go and steal
those horses from Black Jack Dowling.”
Joe shook his head solemnly and said, “I don’t want no more of that sort
of thing,” while Jack said, “That was sure a ticklish time. I’ll never
forget how I felt that night when we were driving those horses off.”
“Very well,” said Hugh, “let’s go on to where those fellows came out of
the brush, and see whether there’s any sign there that will tell us who
they are.”
When they reached the trail made by the horses in crossing Jack rode up
to the edge of the brush and said, “Why, I believe these people have
been here some time. There’s a plain trail leading into these willows.”
“Hold on a minute, son,” said Hugh, and he jumped down from the wagon
and went over to Jack, and the two followed the trail on foot into the
brush. Evidently the people had been there for some time, for the grass
and weeds were worn down where they had passed to and from the stream to
a little camp concealed in the thick willows. Here was a place where a
fire had been built, and a little shelter of willow stems, built
something like a sweat-house, in which the men had evidently slept. A
little inspection of the tiny camping ground showed that the men had had
no bread or coffee, for there were no coffee grounds lying about, nor
was there any place on the ground where a coffee pot had stood, and no
crusts or crumbs of bread. It seemed that they had been cooking their
dinner when Hugh and his party had come in sight, and this was part of
some small black animal, probably a dog. Bits of the hide with the hair
singed off were found about the fire, and on one piece were the stumps
of the ears, the tips having been burned off. In all respects, the
campers seemed to have been poorly provided; but they were white men;
the tracks of the shoes told that.
“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t know who these men are, nor what they’ve
been doing, but it looks to me as if they had been hiding here with a
bunch of horses, maybe animals that they have stolen over in Canada.
Anyhow, they haven’t taken any horses of ours, and we may as well go
on.”
When they reported at the wagon, Joe could throw no light on the
occurrence, and, giving up the riddle, they kept on up the valley. A few
miles further on they turned off to the right, over some low ridges,
into another valley overgrown with willows, which came directly from the
mountains. Here Jack, as he drove the horses ahead of the wagon, started
several sharp-tailed grouse, and at one crossing of a little stream saw
a few elk tracks, but no four-footed game. Only once, toward the end of
the afternoon, did he see anything larger than a bird or a ground
squirrel; then a great gray wolf got up from a hill where he had been
lying, five or six hundred yards away, and trotted slowly off out of
sight.
They followed the valley toward the mountains until late in the
afternoon, when they came to a broad, heavy trail, made, Hugh said, by
the carts of the Red River halfbreeds in their journeyings north and
south along the mountains. It was a rough road for a wagon and required
careful driving, but they made fairly good progress.
Shortly after they had left Milk River it had grown cloudy, and now the
wind blew and a storm threatened. Hugh called to Jack, who was not far
ahead of the wagon, telling him to look out for a place to camp and to
stop at the first one he found. A little later, a small stream appeared
on the trail, and on the other side of it was a little meadow, where
there would be grass for the horses.
The trail went down to the creek and plunged over a three-foot bank, and
Jack held up his hand to stop the wagon, which was following close
behind him. It took a little riding up and down the stream to find a
place where the wagon could cross, but at length they got over and made
camp. Before the horses were turned out, however, a cold rainstorm
began, and by the time the tent was up and the fire started all hands
were wet and uncomfortable, but the warmth of the fire soon made them
feel better. After supper they sat about in the tent, chatting over the
events of the day and the probabilities of the morrow. The rain still
fell, though the wind had ceased, and they were warm and comfortable.
Before daylight the next morning Jack was roused by a rasping sound made
by something scratching against the canvas of the tent. He raised
himself on his elbow, but of course could see nothing, and was about to
lie down again when Hugh spoke and said, “It’s snow on the tent,” and a
moment later the sound was repeated, and then Jack saw that it was made
by wet snow sliding down the steep roof above them. When day came he
looked out of the tent door and saw that the ground was white with snow,
but that it was not cold, and the rapidly falling flakes melted as they
touched his clothing. Joe had gone out to look for the horses, which
could be easily tracked, and presently came back driving the bunch,
which he had found close at hand. They were caught and tied to the
wagon, so that as soon as the storm should cease a start might be made.
Not long after breakfast it stopped snowing, and camp was quickly broken
and the party moved on. After a little rough traveling, up high hills
and down into deep valleys and across narrow streams, they came upon a
long slope dotted here and there with young pines, and a couple of
hours’ drive brought them to the top of a ridge from which they looked
down into the valley of the St. Mary’s Lakes.
The scene was beautiful. The sky had not yet cleared and a heavy fog
hung about the ridge, so that they could see only a short distance on
either side; but in the valley below there was little mist, so that the
lower end of the upper lake and the whole lower lake were visible.
Rounded hills covered with pale green quaking aspens rose sharply from
the water, and here and there a little open park where the green grass
of summer showed against the silver poplars or the black pines. The mist
clouds were moving and changing constantly, and the travelers could not
see the mountain tops, but once, a long way up the upper lake, Jack saw,
or thought he saw, the stern black faces of tremendous cliffs rising
from the very edge of the water. Now and then a soft fold of mist
dropped from the overhanging clouds and floated from the upper, across
the lower, lake, now hiding and again revealing the beauty of the scene.
“Isn’t that a wonderful scene, Hugh?” asked Jack. “This is the first
time I’ve ever seen the upper lake, and I had no idea how beautiful it
was. All I’ve seen before is the lower end of the lower lake and the
river. There’s so much more of it than I thought there was.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “it’s surely a pretty sight, but on a clear day it’s
prettier than it is now.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I suppose so; but just think of the mystery of this
fog. It might hide all sorts of things. Nobody can tell what there is
beyond it.”
For a little while they sat there, looking at the view, and then came
the question of getting down the steep hills to the shores of the lake.
“How are we going to get down, Joe?” asked Hugh. “If we start down here
I’m afraid this wagon will get away from us, and nobody knows where it
will go to. Can’t we get around to the road that goes down to the foot
of the lake?”
“No,” said Joe, “it’s an awful long way down there; bad road, too; lots
of gulches to cross, and maybe break a tongue, maybe break an axle.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t like this a little bit, but if there’s no
other way, why, we’ll have to try it. Luckily there’s no load in the
wagon, and maybe if we rough-lock the wheels and go mighty slowly we can
make it; but if that wagon ever gets started with those horses ahead of
it, it will sure kill the horses and smash the wagon.”
Getting out their ropes and a chain that there was in the wagon, they
made preparations for locking the wheels.
“But, look here,” said Hugh; “locking wheels isn’t going to do us much
good. Don’t you see that if we lock the wheels we’re just turning each
pair into a pair of runners, and on this snow the wagon will go faster
that way than it would if the wheels were free.”
Hugh got out the ax, however, and cutting a green quaking aspen stick
lashed it to the wagon so that it dragged on the ground just in front of
the hind wheels, and was held down by them. Then with Joe on foot,
driving on the upper side of the wagon, and Hugh and Jack on foot with
rope tied to the tail of the wagon, they slowly started down the hill.
It was ticklish business. The slope was hard, grass-covered gravel, and
on this were two or three inches of snow. Sometimes the drag held and
sometimes it slid. Hugh and Jack tried hard to keep the tail of the
wagon from swinging around and starting down hill backward. Gradually
they worked their way down the hill, and presently, just as they were
getting near a level piece of ground which promised easier going, the
wagon began to slide, and for a little it looked as if it would get away
from them. Joe was ready, however, and in response to Hugh’s shout,
guided his horses into a thicket of young aspens, where the wagon
stopped, and by cutting a road through these they worked down the slope
until they found better traveling and got below the snow. Then Jack
climbed back up the hill, got his horses, and followed the wagon.
He found that it had stopped on the shores of a little curving bay near
the head of the lake, where there was good feed for the horses and
plenty of wood. A little trout brook coming down from the hills tinkled
pleasantly at one end of the meadow and was shaded by half a dozen
ancient cottonwood trees. Joe and Hugh were putting up the tent as he
reached the camp, and as soon as he had unsaddled he helped them.
Though the sky was still overcast, the air at the level of the lake was
clear, and one could see a long way. Jack looked out over the lake, now
absolutely without a ripple, and saw a few ducks swimming about.
After supper, as there was still a little daylight left, he jointed his
rod and began to fish, at first without any success, but casting out
into the lake at the point where the brook flowed into it, he got
several rises, and hooked a small trout, weighing perhaps a quarter of a
pound, which he soon brought to land.
After a while Joe left camp and sauntered out to join Jack. It was the
first time that he had seen a trout rod, and when he saw how slender and
how limber it was he shook his head and said, “What do you expect to do
with that fishing pole?”
“Why,” said Jack, “I want to catch some fish, as I did the other
morning.”
“Did you catch them with that pole?” asked Joe.
“Yes,” said Jack, “caught ’em with this, and I hope to catch some more
with it.”
“My!” said Joe; “what’s the use of fishing with a little thing like
that? You can’t catch any big fish on that. It will break right off. You
better let me go back into the willows and cut you a pole that you can
catch fish with.”
Jack laughed a little as he replied: “Hold on a bit and see. If any fish
will rise I can catch them with this rod if I can catch them at all.”
Joe said nothing, but waited, and presently Jack got a rise from a good
trout, and, fortunately, hooked it. The fish was a strong one and darted
hither and thither with splendid rushes, sometimes making the reel
scream as it took the line, which Jack slowly recovered whenever he
could. At times the little rod bent almost double, and more than once
Joe said, “Look out, you’re breaking your rod;” but when the fish
yielded, the pliant bamboo sprang back and was straight again. At
length, tired out, the fish turned on its side and Jack brought it close
to the beach and told Joe to go and grasp it by the gills and lift it
from the water. Joe did so, and the fish proved to be a splendid great
trout that perhaps weighed two pounds. After the fish was saved Joe
wanted to look at the rod. He went over it from butt to tip, feeling it
between his fingers and muttering to himself in his astonishment that so
slight an implement should have caught so big a fish.
CHAPTER VI
A SHEEP HUNT
The sun had hardly risen the next morning before the camp was astir, and
while they were breakfasting on the excellent trout which had been
caught the night before, the question was discussed as to what they
should do now. Immediately across the lake rose a high, castellated pile
of rock, with almost vertical sides, which the boys had recognized as
the mountain under which Joe had killed a mountain sheep with his arrows
some years before. Both boys had spoken of this, and Hugh presently said
to them, “Why don’t you boys go up there to-day and get a sheep. Fish
are good, of course, but we want some fresh meat, and a good fat sheep,
if you can find one, will help us out amazingly. We ought to have
something to eat now, because these flies here are going to drive us
away from the lake and we’ll have to get high up into the mountains.
It’s true we may find game anywhere, but it will be lots better to have
some fresh meat in the pack than to go along without it, and then
perhaps have storms or bad luck for two or three days and have to live
on bacon. The flies don’t seem very bad this morning, but it’s fly time,
and they may tackle us any day and be mighty troublesome to us and to
the stock.”
“Well,” said Jack, “there’s nothing I’d like better than to get up on
that hill again, and if Joe feels like coming I’d like to start right
off.”
“I’m ready,” said Joe. “Come on.”
It took only a short time to bring in the saddle horses, and before long
the boys were mounted and riding off over the Indian trail that led
toward the inlet.
The inlet is a deep, swift river which flows through a strip of land
perhaps two miles long by a mile wide, which separates the lower lake
from the upper, and carries the drainage of all the great mountain
region about the upper lake. The lower end of this strip of land is
wooded with spruces and cottonwoods, but the upper end is a wide meadow
covered with heavy grass, where, in old times, buffalo, elk, and deer
often fed. The Indian trail which the boys were following was originally
a game trail made by the mountain bison and the elk. It wound through
the bare, rolling hills, now and then crossing some tiny stream running
down from the high land, and at last plunged to the level of the inlet,
where a large swift stream spread itself over a graveled bar and twisted
in and out among the willows and aspens. After crossing this they
reached the flat of the inlet, and presently the trail came out into the
open meadow, and a mile further on they rode down into the main inlet
stream. This was so deep that both the boys had to tuck their feet up
behind the saddles to keep from getting wet, and in one place it looked
as if the horses might have to swim. The crossing was a short one,
however, and presently they emerged on the other side, and in a very few
moments began to climb the hill just opposite the lower end of the lake.
The hills here, though smooth, were steep and for the most part covered
with a thick growth of small aspens. Here and there along the dim trail
were little open parks, in one or two of which were fresh elk tracks. As
the boys climbed higher, the aspens gradually gave way to pines, and
then to spruces. The way grew steeper and more difficult, and at last,
when they reached the top of a high hogback, above which the bare rocks
rose sharply, they left their horses and began the ascent on foot. Here
the snow still lay on the ground and made the climb harder, because it
was impossible to see on just what one was stepping. It was rough and
difficult, and the slope was so steep that sometimes the boys had to
scramble along on all fours. At first it was over smooth grass made
doubly slippery by the snow which covered it; then came the piled-up
rocks, which in past ages had tumbled from the face of the mountains,
and here progress, though slow, was easier, because the footing was more
secure. It was on this slope that they passed the last few stunted
spruces, and when they reached the top, they had left all the trees
behind.
Nothing was to be seen save a wide expanse of gray rock and white snow,
which ran up to a cliff whose top was hidden by dense mist. All the
morning the clouds had been hanging about the mountains, and now the
boys were fairly among them. They could see but a short distance in any
direction, and the prospects for hunting were very poor.
“What do you think, Joe?” asked Jack. “Shall we sit down and wait for it
to clear, or keep on?”
“Well,” said Joe, “not much use hunting when it’s like this. Any animals
about are sure to see you before you see them. I’d stop here and wait a
little while and see what happens.”
“All right,” said Jack, “let’s crawl in under this rock and sit there.
Our eyes are not much good to us now, but anyhow we can listen and see
whether we can hear anything moving around. I guess there are sheep up
here all right, and if we can’t get them to-day we can to-morrow.”
“That’s so,” said Joe. “There are sure sheep here. This is a great place
for them. You know Old Brockey?”
“Yes,” said Jack.
“He’s always told me that there are always sheep on this mountain in
summer. They live around there in that valley where you and I killed
one. In winter they live high up on the side toward the lake, but they
are always here. The only thing is to find them.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “we’ve got to keep looking for them until we do.”
The boys sat there for an hour or two, pretty uncomfortable, for both
were wet up to the knees. A cool breeze was blowing along the
mountainside, and the dense fog, which by this time had settled down
over the hills, chilled the boys to the bone; so that after a little
while they got up and began to run up and down over the small level
space near the boulder which sheltered them, beating their arms against
their breasts in the effort to keep warm. Presently, however, and almost
without warning, the sky grew lighter, the fog lifted, and they could
look out over the mountainside and down on the quiet dark green lakes,
and as they looked the sun came out through the clouds, sparkled on the
wet foliage below them, and changed the somber lakes into patches of
brilliant blue. After a little the sun reached the boys, and it was
wonderful to see how their spirits rose and how soon they got warm. At
once they started on, gradually working up the rough slope until they
had nearly reached the foot of the great wall of rock which overhung it.
They made their way slowly around the northern point of the mountain and
into the rocky valley which separates it from the next mountain to the
northward, but almost as soon as they entered this valley the weather
changed again. Black clouds dropped down and a fierce wind began to
blow, bringing with it now and then blinding snow squalls. The fog did
not descend as low as before, but every now and then a flurry of snow
blotted out the whole scene.
Jack and Joe backed up against a huge boulder out of the wind and
waited. As they sat there, a curious squeak, almost like that of a
little child’s penny trumpet, came from the rocks just below them, and
both boys recognized it as the bleating cry of the little chief hare.
Half a dozen small birds alighted close to the boys, as if seeking
shelter from the wind, and with soft whistling twitter walked about on
the stones and on the snow, apparently picking up food. They were so
close that Jack could see their gray crowns and rosy breasts and backs,
and he thought them about the prettiest birds he had ever seen.
“What are they, Joe?” he whispered; but Joe could give him little help.
He said, “Snow birds, I guess. Anyway, they only come in cold weather. I
reckon they live high up on the mountains.”
Presently the little gray-crowned finches disappeared, and only a few
minutes afterward they saw a white-tailed ptarmigan walking about among
the rocks just below them. Then the sun came out and the wind went down
and they started once more on their hunt.
They were following a sheep trail which led along the rocks when
suddenly Jack, as his head arose above a rise, saw in a little meadow
below him the hips and body of a feeding animal. Instantly he slowly
sank out of sight, and Joe imitated him. Jack turned to Joe and made the
sign for mountain sheep and pointed in the direction of the animal. Joe
signed to him to go ahead, and he crept forward, and when he took
another peep he saw a two-year-old ram alone, feeding in the little
meadow in the valley below. The distance was a little more than a
hundred yards and the shot seemed an easy one. Jack motioned Joe to come
beside him and said, “You take the shot, Joe; don’t you want to?”
“No,” said Joe, “you shoot. I’m out here all the time. I have plenty of
chances to kill animals. Now you try that sheep, and see what you can
do.”
“All right,” said Jack, and creeping forward to where a larger piece of
rock crowned the knoll, he rose to his knees behind it, and, resting his
rifle against the side of it, prepared to shoot. The sheep was still
feeding and had his tail toward Jack, but was considerably below the
boy’s position, so Jack aimed at the animal’s back, just in front of the
hips, and drawing a fine sight, fired. The ram fell, and the boys
scrambled down to it, and found it lying dead. The shot had entered the
back just to the right of the backbone and had passed forward and
downward through the lungs and heart.
“Good shot,” said Joe. “It’s pretty hard to shoot down hill that way;
‘most always shoot over.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “that’s so; but you see I had two or three chances,
because his hips were toward me and that gave me a long surface to fire
at. I made up my mind that I’d shoot at the kidneys, and if I didn’t hit
them I had the chance of cutting his lungs and heart and also of
breaking his back.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that’s so. He gave you good shot.”
“Well,” said Jack, “we’ve got to get this beast back to camp, or at
least as much of him as we can carry, and I suppose we may as well get
at it.”
When their knives were out it did not take long to skin the sheep. The
head was not worth taking along.
When, however, it came to carrying the animal they found it was much too
heavy to be transported in one trip. As a matter of fact, neither of the
boys was stout enough to take half the sheep on his back. They were
obliged to quarter it.
“Tell you what,” said Joe, “we don’t know much.”
“Well,” replied Jack, “I guess that’s so; but what do you mean?”
“Why,” said Joe, “next time we come out hunting each one of us better
take a sack and two or three strings in his pocket, and then if we kill
anything we can cut the meat off the bones and put it in the sack, and
that saves all the trouble of carrying the bones into camp.”
“That’s so,” said Jack. “What a pity we didn’t think of that before. But
look here; hold on; why can’t we make a sack out of this sheep’s hide,
cut the meat off the bones and put it in the hide, and then carry the
hide between us on a pole all the way to the horses?”
“Well,” said Joe, “maybe we could do that. That’s a good idea. It’s a
pretty heavy load to carry that way. It’s going to be hard to climb up
the hill.”
“Well,” said Jack, “let’s try it anyhow. I don’t care much about making
two trips from here to the horses if we can avoid it.”
Accordingly the hide was spread out on the rocks, flesh side up, and the
boys cut away all the meat from the sheep’s skeleton. Practically the
only bones they took with them were the shoulder blades, everything else
being cut out and left there. This meat was carefully piled up on the
sheep’s hide, and this was folded over and tied with strings cut from
the sheep’s hide and passed through little holes made in the border of
the hide.
“Jack,” said Joe, “do you know that this is the way our people used to
carry meat into camp, away far back, long before they had horses, and
when they had only a few dogs?”
“No,” said Jack, “I never heard that before. Tell me how it was.”
“Not now,” said Joe. “The first thing we’ve got to do is to see whether
we can carry this load to the horses.”
Going down a little way into the valley they cut a stout quaking aspen
pole, trimmed off the branches and cut it off to about twelve feet in
length. Then, returning to the hide, the skin of the shanks was tied
about the pole so closely that the load of meat lay immediately under it
and had no swing from side to side.
When Jack took his end of the pole and lifted it on his shoulder the
load seemed much heavier than he had supposed. However, Joe raised his
end, and the two staggered forward, at first with more or less
difficulty, but more steadily as they got used to it. Presently they
began to climb the steep trail which would take them over the mountain
to a point above where the horses were. Every now and then they had to
stop and put down their load to rest and puff for a moment or two, until
they recovered their wind. After stopping two or three times, they
learned to choose a place where the load could be deposited on the top
of a high rock, so that it would not be necessary each time to lift it
from the ground. It was slow and weary work, but some progress was made,
and at last they reached the top of the shoulder, whence the way would
all be over level ground or down hill. As they were sitting there,
resting and not talking, Joe put out his hand and touched Jack, and
pointing down the hill, showed him a marten, resplendent in his glossy
brown coat, running along and whisking his black-tipped tail. The animal
did not see the boys, and after he had passed out of sight, Joe said,
“You bet your life that fellow will find that sheep skeleton before
night and he’ll have a good time there.”
A little later the boys reached the top of the slope, and looking down
they could see the horses tied to the trees below. They took their load
off the stick, tied the strips of skin of the legs tightly together, and
then rolled the bundle over the top of the ledge, watching it as it
rolled and bounded down the hill, and finally stopped among the trees
only a hundred yards or so from the horses. Then they began to climb
down the rocks, and before long had reached their animals.
“Now, Joe,” said Jack, “how are we going to carry this meat to camp?”
“I reckon we’d better pack it on my horse and I can walk,” said Joe. “It
isn’t far.”
“Well, but how are you going to get across the creek?”
“Oh, I can ride on top of the load for a little short way like that,”
declared Joe.
“I don’t know, though,” he went on, “whether these horses will pack
fresh meat like this, but we’ll have to try.”
It was soon evident that the horses would strongly object to the load,
and it was not until Joe’s horse had been blinded by a coat that the
boys could lift the meat across the saddle and lash it with Joe’s
lariat. After that had been done and the blind removed from the horse’s
head he showed a good deal of disposition to buck, but at last thought
better of it, and when Jack led the way down the trail, Joe’s horse
followed very quietly.
When streams had to be crossed, Joe clambered on the load of meat, and
they reached camp long before sundown without further incident.
CHAPTER VII
OLD-TIME HUNTING WAYS
“Well,” said Hugh, when they rode up to the tent, “I’m glad you got some
meat. Now, before you even unsaddle, I’m going to send one of you boys
up into that cottonwood tree there. Knot a couple of those sling ropes
together and let us haul that meat up above the flies if we can. It’ll
spoil in a day if we leave it down here close to the ground, where the
blow flies can get at it.”
The wisdom of this advice was recognized at once, and Jack promptly
scrambled up into the cottonwood and made his way into the lower
branches. Joe threw him the end of a sling rope and Jack climbed well
into the tree, and then, passing the rope over a branch, the meat was
hauled up and tied thirty or forty feet above the ground, out of reach
of the flies and exposed to the breeze which blew almost constantly up
or down the lake.
As they sat around the fire that night after supper Jack said, “Hugh, a
man who was hunting sheep all the time would get to have mighty good
wind, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s surely so. Good wind, strong legs and a mighty
steady head come to anyone who hunts sheep or goats much. You’ve got to
be climbing up or down pretty much all the time. You must look for your
game on the high peaks and ridges and along the cliffs. Of course,
where sheep are plenty you can follow the sheep trails, but sometimes
it’s just pretty straight up and down climbing over the rocks and in
places where, if a man lost his footing, he would roll a long way. I
never minded climbing over the rocks, no matter how steep they were, but
sometimes it’s wearying work to crawl around over the shale, that yields
and slips under your feet, and where for every foot you go up you slip
back nine inches; and of course, when the mountains are covered with
snow and ice it’s harder yet, because you never can be quite sure of
your foothold.”
“Well,” said Jack, “there are some Indians that hunt sheep almost
altogether, aren’t there?”
“Yes,” replied Hugh, “the Sheep Eaters get their name from the fact that
they used to make their main living by hunting sheep.”
“I’ve heard of the Sheep Eaters,” said Jack, “but I’ve forgotten who
they are and where they lived. Tell me what you know about them, won’t
you?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “they live south of here and their main range used to
be somewhere near that country that we went through two or three years
ago, where those hot springs and spouting geysers are. Sheep Eaters, as
I understand it, are a band of the Bannocks, and the Bannocks are
relations to the Snakes.
“In old times they say that these Sheep Eaters used to make drives of
sheep. They would build a lot of blinds, and hide along the trails where
the sheep were accustomed to go up and down the mountains, and then
they’d send men around and scare the sheep, and when they came down near
the blinds the Indians hidden there would shoot them. Then, of course,
they used to still-hunt them with bows and arrows. I’ve heard that the
men who were hunting sheep used to carry a head and skin and cover
themselves with it in part, and disguised in that way, used to get up
within arrow shot of the game. The man’s legs were rubbed with white or
gray clay, and if he went along in a stooping posture, with his body
covered with the animal’s skin and the head, it’s easy to see how he
might get up pretty close to the game. I read a book once written by
John Franklin, that man, you know, that was lost up in the Arctic a good
many years ago and about whom there was a great deal of excitement at
the time, in which he told how the Huskies up north used to hunt caribou
something the same way, only in this case there were two men, one
walking behind the other, both stooping down and the man in the lead
carrying a caribou’s head. The book said that the rear man carried the
two guns, and that the man in front, who carried the head, imitated the
deer so well that sometimes they could walk right up to the edge of the
herd. Seems to me I’ve heard something of the same sort about Indians
using the antelope head in hunting antelope.”
“Well,” said Jack, “that’s seems queer. I don’t believe you could do
that with any game in these days.” “No,” said Hugh, “maybe not, but you
must remember in those old times game was plenty; it never was scared by
noises, because then they didn’t have any guns, and the people in any
range of mountain country were not many and were not often seen by the
game. Speaking of this way of using game heads makes me think of a story
that Wolf Voice told me about something that his grandfather saw a
great many years ago. You don’t know Wolf Voice, of course, but he’s a
young fellow--not so very young either, come to think about it; he must
be a middle-aged man by this time. He’s half Cheyenne and half Minitari,
and he did some considerable scouting for General Miles a few years ago.
This is what he told me that his grandfather saw: He was one of a war
party of Cheyennes that had gone off to try and take horses from the
Snakes. One morning they were traveling along through the mountains,
fifteen or sixteen of them, walking through a deep canyon. Presently one
of them saw on a ledge of the canyon far above them, the head and
shoulders of a big mountain sheep, which seemed to be looking out over
the valley. The man pointed it out to the other members of the war
party, and they watched it as they went along. After a while it drew
back from the ledge, and a little later they saw it again, further along
the canyon, and it stood there right at the edge of the precipice and
seemed to be looking up and down the valley. The Cheyennes kept watching
it as they went along, and presently they saw a mountain lion jump on
the sheep’s back from another ledge above it and both animals fell over
the cliff, a long way before they struck the rocks below. The Cheyennes,
feeling sure that the sheep had been killed either by the fall or by the
lion, ran to the place to get the meat. When they got there, the lion
was trying to get away on three legs and one of the Indians shot it with
an arrow. Then they went to the sheep, and when they started to skin it
they saw that it wasn’t a sheep, but a man wearing the skin and head of
a sheep. He had been hunting, and his bow and arrows were wrapped in
the skin and lay against his breast. The fall had killed him. They could
tell from the way his hair was dressed and from his moccasins that he
was a Bannock.”
“Well,” said Jack, “that’s an interesting story, and that brings the
fashion these people had right home to us, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I guess there’s no doubt but that they made these
disguises and used them. Why, Joe here will tell you what he’s heard
from his grandfathers about the way the men used to dress up and lead
the buffalo into the piskuns.”
“Yes, I think I’ve heard about that. They used to wear a kind of buffalo
skin dress, didn’t they, Joe?”
“Yes,” said Joe, “sometimes they wore a kind of a cap and coat made of
buffalo skins, and sometimes they just carried their robes. Of course,
they didn’t show themselves close to and in plain sight of the buffalo.
They just showed themselves enough to make the buffalo wonder what they
were, and follow ’em to try to find out. The Indians think that it was
the power of the buffalo rock that used to make the buffalo come, but I
guess it was just nothing but curiosity. Everybody has seen antelope get
scared and run away, and then if a man dodges out of sight very likely
they’ll turn around and run back and close up to him, to try to find out
what it was they got scared at.”
“Sure, that’s so,” said Hugh, “and it isn’t antelope or buffalo alone.
You’ll see elk and black-tailed deer do the same thing. They’ll stand
and look and look, and often you can fire three or four shots at them
before they’ll start to run away. In the same way if a bear sees
something that he don’t understand, why, he gets up on his hind legs and
looks as hard as he can. Of course, all these animals would rather smell
than look; their noses tell them the truth and they don’t have to smell
a second time to find out whether it’s an enemy or not, but often they
have to look half a dozen times. Animals are mighty inquisitive
creatures. If they see something they don’t understand they want to find
out about it.”
“Why, Hugh,” said Jack, “it isn’t animals alone. Birds do the same
thing. I’ve never seen this myself, but the books tell about it and I
talked with one man, a friend of my uncle’s, who had seen it himself. In
the winter when the ducks are down South and in big flocks they used to
have a way of shooting them that they called toling. The way they did it
was this: If a lot of ducks were sitting on the water too far off from
the shore to be shot at, the gunners would go down and hide close to the
shore and then they would send out a little dog that was trained to run
up and down and play about so as to attract the attention of the ducks.
The ducks might be sitting far off in a big raft or flock, many of them
perhaps asleep; but when they saw the little dog playing, some of them
would lift their heads and swim in toward the shore to find out what he
was doing. Gradually more and more ducks would lift their heads and swim
in, until, finally, the whole flock would be coming. As they got nearer,
the dog, which of course was watching them, would make himself smaller
and smaller, until finally he just crawled along the shore on his belly
and perhaps gradually worked away from the beach and into the grass, but
those fool ducks would keep swimming in, trying to see him, until at
last they would get within gunshot, and the people hidden there would
give them one barrel on the water, and then one as they rose, and
sometimes kill twenty-five or thirty of them.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “that’s one on me. I never heard of that before, but
since we’re branching off onto ducks, I’ll tell you what I have heard of
and know of its being done, too, though I never did see it done. In
spring and fall, in ponds where the wild rice grows, over, say, in
Minnesota, there used to be terrible lots of ducks and geese stopping in
spring and fall to feed, on their way north and south. The Indians, the
Sioux anyhow, and likely Chippewas or Saulteaux, when they found a place
where these ducks were right plenty, used to strip off and make a kind
of a little hat or cap of grass that they’d put on their heads, and then
they’d wade in the water and move along very slowly so that this cap
would look either like a little floating trash or a little group of
grass stems projecting above the water, and then they’d work up close to
the ducks and catch them by the feet and pull them under and then wring
their necks.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I guess that’s all right, for I’ve heard of East
Indian people doing the same thing, only they fitted a kind of a gourd
over their heads and walked around with that, so that it just looked
like a gourd floating in the water. Don’t the Blackfeet do anything like
this, Joe?”
“I guess not,” said Joe; “I never heard anything like it. They say in
old times, long before the white people came, the Piegans used to go to
the shallow prairie lakes where ducks and geese bred, at the time of the
year when they can’t fly, and then the dogs and young men would go into
the pond on one side and drive out all the birds on the other and there
the women and children would kill them with sticks. In the early spring,
too, when the birds had their nests, they used to go to these lakes and
get plenty of eggs. I bet you never heard the way they used to cook
them.”
“I don’t know,” said Jack, “I reckon I never did.”
“Why,” said Joe, “they used to dig a hole in the ground, a pretty deep
hole, and then put some water in it, and right over the water they’d
build a little platform of twigs and put on that platform as many eggs
as it would hold, and above that they’d build another platform and put
eggs on that and so on to the top, maybe have three or four of these
little platforms built of willows to hold the eggs up. Then from the top
of the ground they dug out a little slanting hole to the bottom of the
first hole. Then they covered the big hole with twigs and put grass on
that and dirt on the grass. Then they built a fire close to the hole and
heated rocks and rolled them down the little side hole, so that they
would go into the water at the bottom of the big hole. They would keep
rolling these hot rocks in until the water got very hot and made plenty
of steam. The steam couldn’t get out of the big hole and it just stayed
there hot and cooked the eggs. Then when they thought the eggs were
cooked they uncovered the big hole and took them from the platforms and
there they were all cooked.”
“That was ingenious, wasn’t it, Hugh?” said Jack.
“Yes, so it was,” said Hugh, “but then these people were mighty
ingenious in many ways. Just think of the way they used to cook in a
buffalo hide, or in the paunch of an animal. You and I would eat raw
meat all our lives before we could get up such a scheme as that.”
“Yes, that’s so,” replied Jack. “It’s about the last thing I should
think of. Practically all their boiling had to be done by means of hot
stones put into the water, for, of course, they never had any vessels
that could be set over a fire until they got pottery. I don’t suppose
anybody knows when they first invented it, but it may have been a long
time ago.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “don’t be too sure about their not having anything to
put over a fire to boil. I never saw it myself, but I’ve been told by
people that I believe, that these Saulteaux up North used to boil water
in their birch bark dishes. They say that they could hang a birch bark
kettle over the fire and boil water in it, and that the birch bark
wouldn’t take fire while the water was in the kettle.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I certainly would like to see that done. I suppose
it’s so, if you’ve been told so by people that you believe, but it seems
to me that’s one of the hardest stories that’s been told me since I’ve
been out in this country.”
CHAPTER VIII
A BIG BEAR HIDE
The next morning while the party were cooking and eating breakfast, a
swarm of mosquitoes settled upon the camp in great numbers. Not only did
they trouble the men, but the horses were greatly annoyed by them; so
much as that they stopped feeding and began to wander off, seeking the
thickets of quaking aspen and willow, through which they walked in order
to brush off the insects. Besides the mosquitoes, the green head
flies--bulldogs, Hugh called them--were very troublesome. Before
breakfast was over Hugh said, “Look here, boys, we can’t stay here. The
flies are too bad. We must pack up and go on and get somewhere higher
up, or else to a place where the wind is blowing. Unless we do that we
are likely to lose our horses. They’ll run away on us.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “we’ve either got to get high up on the hills or else
go out on the prairie. Here the flies are too bad.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “you two boys build two or three small fires and
throw some grass or wet bark on them so as to make plenty of smoke, and
then go out and round up the horses and bring them in, so that they can
stand in the smoke. Then we’ll cache the wagon here in the brush
somewhere, and pack up and go on up the river and see if we can’t find
some place where the flies are not so thick.”
It took the boys but a short time to build a line of small fires at
right angles to the lake, down which a gentle breeze was blowing, and
then, pulling some green grass and stripping the wet bark off an old
rotting cottonwood log, they soon had a line of smokes too strong for
any insect. Then, going a little way down the lake, they found the
horses and drove them back to leeward of the fire, where they stopped in
apparently great contentment, with only their heads visible above the
smoke.
Meanwhile Hugh had been unloading the wagon, getting out the pack
saddles with their riggings and making up the packs. A portion of the
provisions he left in the wagon, but the flour and the bacon he tied
with extra ropes and, when the boys had finished with the horses, he had
one of them climb into a tree and hang the food where it could not be
reached by mice or ground squirrels. The sheep meat was lowered and
found to be perfectly good and so dried on the outside that the flies
would not trouble it. It was put in an old flour sack to go on one of
the packs.
Long before noon matters were so far advanced that the horses were
saddled and, after three of the animals had been packed and led back
again into the smoke, the three riding horses were saddled, and
presently the little train set off up the lake over the trail followed
by Jack and Joe the day before. While they were crossing the inlet, and
for the first mile or two up the trail on the other side of the upper
lake, the flies were very bad, but presently, when they emerged from the
growth of young quaking aspens they met a strong breeze blowing down the
lake, which made things better.
Hugh had sent Jack ahead, telling him to follow the trail that led up
the lake to an old Indian camping ground six or seven miles above the
outlet. The trail was plain and it was impossible to lose it, and Jack
plodded along fighting mosquitoes and watching the splendid mountains
which rose on either side of the lake. As he passed over a little ridge
between two of the many streams that ran down from the mountains, he
suddenly saw ahead of him and a little to his right, a huge brown bear,
apparently looking not at him, but at something behind him on the trail.
The bear stood on the hillside at a little distance above the trail, and
a rise of the ground had hidden Jack from view. It was a
splendid-looking animal, its coat bright and glossy, and Jack could see
the long fur ripple as the breeze struck it.
All this Jack’s eye took in at a glance, and instantly he had slipped
out of his saddle and stepped around his horse’s head, holding the reins
over his left arm. He pitched his gun to his shoulder, aimed at the bear
just behind the foreleg and low down and fired. Then, turning, he sprang
into his seat almost without touching the saddle.
At the shot the horse had stepped quickly to one side, but had not
pulled back, so that Jack had no trouble in remounting, while the bear
had given a loud bawl, and had fallen to the ground, turning its head to
bite the wound, and then had rolled over two or three times down the
steep hillside.
Jack whirled his horse and spurred up the hill, wishing to be above the
bear rather than below it. At the same time he waved his arm to Hugh,
who was now in sight, motioning to him to go up the hill. By this time
the bear had gained his feet and was coming back along the trail as hard
as he could. His head hung low, his ears were laid back and his long
tongue lolled from his mouth. The noise of the shot had put every one on
the alert, and it made Jack laugh a little to look back and see his two
companions and all the pack horses scramble up the hill as hard as they
could. The bear covered forty or fifty yards, running fast and strong,
and then, seeming to notice the people on the hill above it, turned and
rushed toward Jack, but before it had got anywhere near him, it began to
go more and more slowly and to stagger a little and presently fell,
rolled over backwards two or three times and then lay still. The three
men with their pack horses came together on the hill, well above the
bear, and Hugh said, “Well, son, what’s the matter with you? Do you want
to stampede this outfit? Looks to me like you’ve got quite a bear
there.”
“Why, yes, Hugh, he’s about the prettiest bear I ever saw. He looked so
handsome standing there on the hillside that I couldn’t help taking a
shot at him. I think he has a good hide, too, but maybe I oughtn’t to
have fired, for it will take us some time to skin him and while we’re
doing that the flies will be getting in their work.”
“That’s so,” said Hugh, “but now that he’s dead, we’ve got to take his
coat off. I’ll tell you what we’d better do. You and Joe go on to that
little point that you see sticking out there, just this side of where
that big creek comes down, and make camp there. Get as far out toward
the water as you can. I think maybe the breeze will keep the flies down,
and we can stop there with comfort. I’ll stay here and start in to skin
the bear, and after you’ve made camp you come back with a pack horse and
we’ll take the hide into camp.”
“Hold on, Hugh,” said Jack. “That’s a kind of a low-down trick for me to
kill this bear, and then leave you here to skin it and fight flies. Let
me stop here with you now and take the skin off and let Joe go on and
make camp. If the flies are not bad he can do it alone just about as
well as we could together, and if they are, he’ll have to make a smoke
for the stock and unpack, and when you and I get back with this hide, it
won’t take long to put up the tent.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “maybe that is better. It’ll shorten up the work to
skin now.”
Hugh explained again to Joe where it was that he wanted to camp, and Joe
went on with the pack horses. Hugh and Jack sat down by the bear and
began to skin it.
“Now, I want you to take notice, son,” said Hugh. “Here it is July and
this bear hasn’t begun to shed out a bit yet nor even to get sunburned,
and yet maybe he’s been out of his den now for two months or more. He
isn’t fat; he’s lost considerable flesh since he’s come out, but his
coat is just as good as it was the day he left his den.”
“I’ve always heard, Hugh,” said Jack, “that bears, when they come out of
their dens, are just as fat as when they go into them.”
“That’s what everybody says,” said Hugh, “and I reckon it’s true. I
never happened to kill a bear right fresh from its den, but I’ve killed
them in May and found them very fat. I’ve a kind of an idea that they
lose their fat slowly. Most people say that when they come out and start
wandering about looking for food they keep going all the time and get
poor right away. I don’t quite believe that is so. I’m pretty sure they
don’t get much to eat at first, and I’ve a notion that if they lost
their fat right away some of them would starve to death before food got
plenty. When we get this fellow’s skin off, I’m going to look into his
stomach and see what he’s had to eat in the last twenty-four hours.”
“That’ll be good,” said Jack. “I’d like to see, too.”
For some time the skinning went on in silence and the hide began to drop
from both sides of the great carcass.
“I tell you, Hugh,” said Jack, “this skin beats any one of those that we
got last summer down in North Park. I think it’s fully as big as the
biggest one that we got then, and it seems to me that the hair is twice
as long and twice as silky.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “it’s an awful good hide. I don’t know when I’ve seen
one that was much better. You must remember that those we killed last
summer were not in good order; the winter coat had only just begun to
grow. This hide will make a fine robe if we can get anybody to tan it.”
“How do you mean, Hugh?” said Jack. “Won’t any woman tan this hide if we
pay her for it?”
“Why, no, son, you know a great deal better than that. Haven’t I told
you a good many times that lots of Blackfeet women won’t touch a bear
hide on any terms? You know the Blackfeet, anyhow, are afraid of bears
and think they’re powerful medicine. A good many of them won’t call a
bear by his name. They call him Sticky Mouth. Most of them won’t sit on
a bear robe. There are some medicine men or priests that can wear a kind
of cap made of a strip of bearskin on the head, but it’s hard to find a
woman that has the power to tan a bear hide. They are afraid of the
spirit of the bear; afraid that it will bring them bad luck.”
“Now, Hugh,” said Jack, “I don’t remember that you ever told me about
that before. I know that the Indians think that a bear is mighty smart
and has great power, and I know that the Eastern Indians when they
killed a bear used to smoke to the head and make the head presents of
tobacco, but I didn’t know that they wouldn’t touch a bear hide.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “you know it now. There’s only now and then one of
these Piegan women that would dare to dress a bear hide. We may find
such a woman in camp when we go back, but the chances are against it.
However, I reckon we’ll manage somehow to get the hide tanned.”
While they were talking thus, both workers were plying the knife
vigorously and in a little while the hide was free all around and the
carcass was slipped off it. Then Hugh, cutting into the bear’s stomach,
turned out its contents on the ground. It was almost empty, containing
nothing but two or three wads of grass and a single ground squirrel,
which had been swallowed whole.
“You see,” said Hugh, “this fellow hasn’t had much to eat, and you see,
too, that he’s got quite a little fat left on his carcass. I reckon
maybe he’s been down along the shore of the lake to see if he couldn’t
pick up a fish or two that had drifted ashore, and not having found
anything there, he was going back up onto the mountain to try to dig
out a gopher, or a woodchuck, or one of those little rock rabbits.”
They now folded the bear hide, and while Jack held his horse, Hugh tried
to tie on the hide behind the saddle, but the horse would have none of
it. He struggled and pulled back, and it was only by blinding him with a
coat--an operation which took some time and involved some trouble
because both men were covered with bear’s grease, the scent of which
frightened the horse--that they could get him blindfolded and the hide
firmly lashed in position.
“Now, Hugh,” said Jack, “I’m not proposing to get onto that horse on
this side hill. The chances are that he’d buck and very likely drop me
off on a rock. I’ll walk and lead him until he’s a little more used to
his load.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “that’s pretty sensible. You go ahead and lead him
and I’ll follow, and if he pulls away from you, why I’ll drive him along
the trail.”
Jack took the blind from the horse’s head and taking up his gun went
down toward the trail. The horse, however, was afraid of his load and
bucked pretty savagely. They had, however, taken the precaution to cinch
the saddle tightly, and the lashing held, so that, at length, the badly
frightened horse followed more or less uneasily along the trail, Hugh
riding behind him and having some trouble in controlling his own animal,
into whose nostrils the scent of the bear hide was constantly blown.
Their progress toward camp was slow, but an hour after they started they
reached it and found the horses feeding near it not greatly troubled by
the flies, for a strong wind was now blowing down the lake.
During the afternoon, while Hugh was getting the camp in shape and
cooking supper, the two boys stretched the bear hide and went over it
with a knife, scraping from it all possible grease. After supper and
just before sundown, Jack, casting at the mouth of the turbulent
mountain stream which here poured itself into the lake, caught a dozen
splendid trout, some of which gave him fine sport.
After nightfall, the breeze which swept down from the mountains was so
cool that the mosquitoes ceased to be troublesome, and they sat about
the camp fire enjoying its grateful warmth. Presently Joe broke out and
said, “Where are we going, White Bull? I never came into the mountains
so far as this, and I don’t know this country.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “I ain’t much surprised at that, for the Piegans
don’t go much into the mountains. They are afraid of the bears and of
the bad ghosts that live there.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that is true. The Piegans like the open prairie, where
there is always plenty of light and where you can see a long way. The
only people here that go much into the mountains are the Kootenays and
the Stonies. Sometimes the Bloods go in a little way to hunt or trap
beaver, but not far. Plenty of men in my tribe would stop right here;
they would not go any further. Up above here, on this lake, I see that
the mountains come close together, and there is only just room enough
for the water to get through. We don’t know what there is beyond there
and we do not want to go to meet the dangers that may be there.”
“Why,” said Jack, “you don’t feel that way, do you, Joe? You’ve been
pretty nearly raised among white people. You are not afraid of the
mountains, are you?”
“No,” replied Joe, “I’m not much afraid of them. I’m a little afraid,
but I don’t know what there is up behind these rocks that we see ahead
of us. Only to-day we saw this awful big bear that you killed. Maybe up
in the mountains there are more bears and bigger ones and worse. I would
like to see what there is up there, but then I know that it may be very
dangerous to go there.”
“Well,” said Hugh, with a smile, “we haven’t talked much about it, but I
thought we’d just go up here along the lake and get to the head of it
and then follow up the river that comes into it and keep on climbing
until we got to the head of that river. Somewhere, not very far away, it
must begin, and must come falling down from these high peaks, because
not very far beyond here there are other rivers running the other way,
so that we are here somewhere near the backbone of this country.
“Well,” said Joe, “I’d like to see it. In old times you know the Piegans
were not afraid of the mountains as they are now. In old times they used
to cross over these mountains and go beyond, into the country of the
Snakes and the Kootenays and the River people,[A] and used to take
horses from them and drive them back through the mountains; also, they
used to go through the mountains and make long journeys to war to the
southwest, and if they found little parties of white men who were
trapping or trading, they would try and take their horses and a scalp
or two, if they could. I have heard old people tell about how their
fathers used to go on these war journeys and used to fight everyone that
they met, white people or Indians.”
[A] The Kalespelms, more commonly called Flathead Indians, who dwell
on and near Lake Pend d’Oreille.
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s so. In the early days before my time the
Blackfeet were thought to be a terrible people.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Jack, “I’ve read some of the old books about the
early trappers and they are always talking about the danger from the
Blackfeet, and how they would lie in wait for the trappers, as they went
along the streams gathering their fur in the morning, and kill them, or
how they would try to run off their horses. Sometimes they would have
big battles with them. The trappers, I think, were mostly at peace with
the Snakes and perhaps with other tribes, and often camped with them,
and when the Blackfeet were troublesome, if the trappers had Indian
allies, they often used to follow up the Blackfeet, and punish them
pretty severely for the raids they had made on them.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “as I was saying, we haven’t talked much about this
and none of us here know much about the country ahead of us. I came up
once, trapping, as far as the head of the lake. I got a few beaver, and
once I killed an elk just above the head of the lake, but beyond there I
have not been. Still, I guess we’ll be able to find our way. The valley
is narrow and the mountains high on either side, and we cannot very well
get out of that trough, but, on the other hand, it may be pretty bad
going there. The whole valley may be a swamp or a succession of little
lakes and it’s possible that we can’t find a way to the head of it at
all. The only way to learn about it is to try. Anyhow, it’s new country.
I never heard of anybody going up on the river above the lake, except
one man, old man Ellis. He told me once about going up there and said
that he got across to the other side of the range, but he said it was
pretty hard traveling for the animals, and that in one place they had to
lower their horses by ropes over some bad places.”
“Do you mean to say, Hugh, that no white men have been up here, except
that one?”
“He’s the only one I ever heard about,” replied Hugh. “And I never felt
quite sure that he got as far as he thought he did. At all events it
won’t be a bad trip to make, unless the flies are too awful bothersome,
and by the way, son, to-morrow morning before we start, we’d better get
out that strip of mosquito bar that you put in. If the mosquitoes are
bad we’ll need it before very long.”
“I’ll do that, Hugh,” said Jack. “But what do you suppose we’ll find up
there at the head of the river?”
“It’s pretty hard to say,” Hugh answered. “I expect we’ll find lots of
rocks and stone and ice, probably lots of game, and we’ll surely see
some mighty pretty scenery; high peaks and big snow fields. There sure
ought to be lots of sheep and goats up there, some elk, maybe a moose or
two, and of course some bears, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to
get all this game. It only means maybe that we’ll see some of it;
perhaps only some signs of it. Just how far we can take the horses, of
course, I don’t know. We’ll have to try and do the best we can. Likely
enough, we’ll know a lot more about it three or four days from now.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll be mighty glad to get up there and see what
there is.”
“Yes,” agreed Joe, “that will be good. I shall have plenty of things to
tell the people when I get back to the camp after this trip.”
CHAPTER IX
A BLACKFOOT LEGEND
For a time all sat silent, and then Joe asked, “White Bull, did you ever
hear that the people once lived on the other side of the mountains; that
there is where they came from?”
“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t know as I have. I seem to remember something
about such a story, but I can’t remember what it is.”
“Tell it to us, Joe,” said Jack.
“Well,” said Joe, “it’s a story I heard my uncle tell a good many years
ago, when I was a little fellow, but I don’t believe it’s true. He
didn’t know whether it was true or not. It was just something that he
had heard from some older person. You know the Piegans believe that they
used to live far up northeast, in the timber by some big lake, and that
they came this way looking for some place where life was easier, where
there was more game and it was easier to get close to the animals. I
guess that is true, because there are old people still living whose
fathers and grandfathers can remember old Piegans, who said that they
had made that journey. This other story is about some of the people
having lived across the mountains. It’s a long story, but I’ll tell it
to you if you want me to.”
“Go ahead,” said Hugh.
“Well,” Joe went on, “the story tells that a long time ago the people
lived west of the mountains and in a hot country away to the south. A
season came when all animals were scarce and hard to find and the
people got hungry. In the camp was an old man and his family, three
sons, young men grown up. Now, at last, when there was no food to be
had, this old man said, ‘Why should I stay here where there is no food?
I shall go away with my children and we will try to find a place where
there are animals and where food can be had. I will travel toward the
rising sun, even to the mountains, to the country where no one has ever
been, to a land no one has looked on.’
“They started; the old man and his wife, and the three sons and their
wives and children. They did not know the mountains, and supposed that
as soon as they had gone over the nearest one they would pass down on
the other side to the plain, but they found that this was not so. Beyond
the first mountain rose another, and beyond this another. They traveled
on, day after day, and climbed ridges and went down into valleys and
always in front of them they saw other ridges or other valleys, always
steeper, higher and harder to cross. The road was rough, thick timber
kept them back, sharp stones cut their feet, wide rivers stopped them.
They found no game, except now and then some birds, and soon they grew
tired, hungry, footsore and discouraged. At last they had almost made up
their minds to stop looking for what they could not find, and to turn
about and try to return to their own country and their own people; but
one night, as they talked about this, the old man said to them, ‘Come,
let us take courage, let us keep on a little longer and try to find that
country. The road has been long and hard, and we are almost tired out,
but let us go on a little further. It may be that we have almost
arrived. To-day you saw that high mountain beyond, toward which we are
traveling; let us climb over that and if beyond that we see nothing
except more mountains, then we will turn about and go back to the place
we came from.’ The sons said it was good, and the next day they traveled
on.
“At length they reached the top of the high peak, and when they looked
down on the land below they saw before them a wide prairie. It looked
beautiful to these people, who were tired of the lonely, rough, dark
mountains. On the plain they could see herds of big brown animals,
larger than any that they had ever seen before, animals with curly hair
and short black horns. There, too, were yellow antelope, and in the
valleys, deer, and on the ridges of the mountain were many elk. Fresh
streams ran to the prairie, and the sight was one that made their hearts
glad.
“‘Ah,’ said the old man, ‘now it is good.’
“They all stopped, and he sat down and smoked to the sun and said,
‘Listen, O Sun, now you have taken pity on us. We believed that we were
going to die among these rocks, but you have taken care of us and have
brought us safely out of them. Now we can see the things that we may
live by.’ So he prayed for help, and for plenty to eat and for long
life, and when he had finished his prayer and his smoking, they made a
present to the sun. Then they went slowly down the mountainside and
toward night camped on a stream.
“The next day they hunted, but they could kill no game. They had no
arrows, for they had used them all up in crossing the mountains, and the
buffalo would not let them get too close to them, so they were still
without food and hungry.
“Then the old man saw that something must be done, and he made strong
medicine, a black medicine, which he rubbed on the feet of his oldest
son, and after this had been put on his feet, the young man became so
swift that he could at once run up alongside the fastest cows and kill
them with his knife. This made the young man feel good, and he said to
his brothers, ‘Now and from this time forth I and my children are
Sĭks´ ĭ kā.[B] This shall be our name.’
[B] Black his foot.
“When the other two sons saw that their elder brother could do so much
through the medicine their father had made and that they could do
nothing, they felt badly. They went to the old man and said, ‘Why do you
treat our brother so much better than you treat us? You have made him a
swift runner, so that he can overtake the game, while we can kill
nothing, and our wives and children have to eat what he gives us. What
have we done that you have forgotten us? Come, now, make us also swift
runners, so that we, too, can have enough to eat and can have names.’
“The old man answered them and said, ‘Why do you do nothing except sit
about the fire and eat food which your brother has killed? If you wish
names go to war, and when you come back, if you have done well and
killed enemies and counted coups, you, too, shall have names.’
“So the young men went back to the lodge, and each asked his wife to
make him some moccasins and a war sack, and they made themselves some
war arrows and started.
“They were gone a long time. Sĭks´ ĭ kā killed many buffalo,
and the women dried the meat and tanned the hides. The berries grew
ripe, and the women cut down the sarvice bushes and beat off the fruit
over a robe spread on the ground and dried the berries. Then the tops of
the mountains became white with snow, the leaves fell. From the north
came the wild fowl, the swans, geese and ducks, and their numbers
covered the surface of the prairie lakes, while their cries were heard
night and day through the air. Then the wild fowl passed on, the snow
fell and melted and fell again, and it was winter. After a long time
black winds began to blow from the west and the snow disappeared. Then
again the wild fowl were seen. Then the Thunder shouted, bringing the
rain, so that the berries might grow large and sweet. Then the grass
began to spring, the prairie to turn green, and soon it was summer.
“One night, a year after the young men had gone away, as they sat about
the fire in the lodge, they heard the dogs bark and presently the door
was lifted and the second son stepped in and sat down. His robe was thin
and all his clothing worn by long travel, but his body was lean and
hard. The women hurried and set food before him, and while he ate they
sang songs about him, telling how brave he was and how he had traveled
far to strike his enemies. After he had eaten the old man filled the
pipe and smoked and passed it to his son, who spoke, and told of his
journeyings to far-off lands and among strange people, and how he had
struck his enemies and all that he had done.
“After he had finished the old man said to him, ‘My son, you have done
well and since you have killed many chiefs, let that be your name, Ah´
kāi nāh’ (many chiefs). So after that the second son and his
children and their children were called Ah´ kāi nāh, but now they
call them Kāi´nāh.
“Another season passed, the berries ripened, the leaves fell, the water
fowl came and went; it was winter. Then again the Thunder spoke, and
again the grass grew. The wife of the third son thought much about her
husband, fearing that she would not see him again. She used to talk of
him to her children, telling them that they ought to be brave like their
father.
“One night in summer, when all in the lodge were asleep, the dogs barked
loudly, the lodge door was lifted and a person entered and sat down by
the fire. ‘Who is there?’ said the old man. There was no answer. Then
the wife of the third son rose from her bed and spread grass on the
fire, and soon it blazed up and she saw sitting there her husband. Glad
then was her heart, and quickly she built the fire and gave him food,
and as he ate, she looked at him and saw that his clothing was torn and
ragged, his face thin and his arms and breast scarred, but from his
quiver hung scalps, and on the ground beside him was a bundle. Then she
began to sing about him and the others in the lodge arose and sat by the
fire while he ate. After he had eaten and smoked, he said to the old
man, ‘I have traveled far and I have seen many people. Look at these
scalps,’ and he showed them the scalps and the bundle of strange
clothing that he had taken from enemies far to the south. He told them
all that he had seen and done, and after he had finished speaking his
father said to him, ‘Because you have taken this strange clothing you
shall be called Pī kŭn´ ni’ (garments), so since that time he and
his children’s children have been called Pī kŭn´ ni.”
“That’s a bully story, Joe,” exclaimed Jack, after the tale was ended,
and Hugh joined in and said, “So it is, a mighty good story, but I
reckon it’s just a story and nothing else. I’ve always heard, like Joe
said a little while ago, that the people came from up north and I’ve
always believed that they were relations of the Crees. I’ve often
wondered, though, about how the tribes got their names. There are lots
of stories, but none of them seem to ring true. Now this word Pī
kŭn´ ni for Piegans, I’ve always believed came from Ap´ ĭ kŭn
nĭ, which means a badly tanned robe, one with white spots on it.
Isn’t that so, Joe?”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that’s so all right, and you know Ap´ kŭn nĭ is
a common name in the tribe to-day. There are two or three Indians and
one white man that have that name. This story says that Ah´ kāi
nāh has been shortened to Kainah, and if that is so why shouldn’t Ap´
ĭ kŭn nĭ have been shortened to Pi kun ni. Then the name of my
tribe would mean a robe with hard white spots in it.”
“Of course it would,” said Hugh, “and I believe that’s what it does
mean, but I don’t know that we’ll ever find out for sure.
“Well, boys,” he went on, “let’s turn in. Get out early to-morrow
morning and bring in your horses. I want to start before it gets warm,
so as to get rid of the flies. We may have quite a ways to go
to-morrow.”
CHAPTER X
THE SOURCE OF AN UNKNOWN RIVER
Early next morning the tent was down, the beds rolled and the horses
brought in, saddled, and tied to the trees. As soon as breakfast was
over the packing began and fortunately was soon completed, for before
the party started the mosquitoes and flies had begun to be very
troublesome. As soon as the last lash rope was tied and the hackamore
shanks were looped around the animals’ necks, Hugh mounted and rode
through the narrow strip of cottonwood timber, plunged down into the bed
of the creek, and then up on the other side and in a few moments reached
the foot of a high point of rocks jutting out from Goat Mountain into
the lake and began to climb the steep trail that zigzags up its side.
The way was rough and rocky and sometimes so very steep that Jack,
hanging to the mane of his horse, threw one foot out of the stirrup in
order to be ready to jump in case the horse should fall over backward.
The climb was not long, however, and after one or two pauses to breathe
the horses, the party emerged on the level top of the point, where the
rocks were overgrown with green moss and dotted here and there with
young pine trees. Jack had no idea as to where they should go, but
Hugh’s more practiced eye made out a dim game trail, which he followed
for some distance through the timber, and which at last came out on the
slide rock, fallen from the side of the mountain far above. Here there
was a plain trail made in times past by the mountain bison and the elk
which passed up and down from the plains to the recesses of the high
mountains. Sometimes the slide rock was bare of vegetation; again there
would be half a mile where the soil had slid down from the mountainside
and supported a growth of willows or alders. Sometimes the climb was
very steep, again it was level, and at last the trail passed around the
head of a deep ravine, and after a climb of a few feet, led out on to
grassy ledges.
They were riding quietly along here, when Hugh turned and waved his hand
toward the rocks that towered far above them, and Jack, following the
motion, saw three white goats feeding two or three hundred yards above
them. Involuntarily he checked his horses, intending to take a shot at
them, but seeing that Hugh had not paused, Jack thought better of it and
rode on. After all, there was no special reason for killing them, as the
meat was not needed.
As they went on along the side of the steep mountain toward the head of
the lake, they saw goats several times, usually merely white dots on the
high rocks. These alpine animals seem to suffer greatly from the heat,
and even in very cold weather often seek a shaded spot to get out of the
sun.
Near the head of the lake the travelers crossed a large stream, which
came from a basin running far back into the mountains, where they could
see great fields of snow and ice. Then there was a long ride through the
green timber, during which they passed the head of the lake.
They were evidently following the river valley, for, off on the left,
they could hear the roar of cascades and falls, and once, through the
open stems of some tall aspens, Jack thought he saw spray rising from a
cataract. Hugh kept steadily onward, though so far as Jack and Joe could
see all sign of a trail had now vanished.
At length they came to the edge of a swollen river, on the brink of
which Hugh paused, and after looking at it for awhile, shook his head,
turned his horse and followed up its bank. Now the going was harder, and
through tangled brush, interrupted now and then by deep muddy holes,
where springs or small brooklets came down from the hillsides above
them. The mosquitoes and flies were very bad, and each member of the
party wore gloves and had a handkerchief tied about his neck and turned
up under his hat to protect the back of the neck and head. Hugh smoked
constantly, but even so, was obliged to use his hands continually to
drive away the insects.
They had just wallowed through a particularly deep mud hole in which one
of the pack horses had nearly mired down, when Hugh stopped, dismounted
and went back to tighten a cinch, while Jack got off to help him. They
were pulling on the ropes, and Joe was trying to hold the other horses
to keep them from breaking away, when, suddenly, on the hillside above,
they heard a crashing of sticks and, looking up, saw a huge black moose
trotting along, crossing fallen logs and rocks in his stride, until he
finally disappeared in the timber. The moose had been so close that they
could plainly see his large horns, still soft, more or less shapeless
and velvet covered, but of course they had no opportunity of shooting at
him.
“A good big fellow, wasn’t he, son?” said Hugh, and Jack assented.
“That’s the first moose I’ve seen, Hugh, since we came down from the
Yellowstone Park. Do you remember we killed one there?”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I remember, and I remember, too, that we got a bear
or two close to him.”
“So we did,” assented Jack.
“There,” said Hugh, as he knotted the lash rope, “let’s go on. The flies
make these horses crazy.”
All day long they continued on the rough road, through underbrush, over
rocks and around enormous boulders that had fallen from the precipice
above. About three o’clock they reached a large stream coming from the
right, which evidently joined the river that they had been following a
little further down. Here it took some time to find a place where the
river was fordable. The current was swift and the water looked deep.
No one wished to have the packs thrown down in the stream, for this
would wet everything and might even result in the loss of a horse. By
following up the stream a few hundred yards, however, they found a
riffle, across which stretched a gravel bar, and here they made a
crossing in water no deeper than to the horses’ knees. Not far above
this stream was a wide alder swamp, which gave them much trouble. A
little farther on they came to a small stream flowing down the valley,
along which ran an old game trail, and following this, they emerged just
before sunset on a little round meadow, at the head of which was a lake
a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad. About this, on every side
except the lower, rose vertical walls of rock, now black in the shadow
of the high mountains to the west.
“I tell you, Joe,” said Jack, “this is a curious place, isn’t it? Cold
and gloomy enough.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “I don’t like this much. You can’t see far. I don’t
wonder that my people would rather stay out on the prairie.”
“What shall we do with the horses, Hugh?” asked Jack. “Tie ’em up, or
let them loose?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “you may as well let ’em feed and drag their ropes
until it gets dark. They are pretty tired, and the feed is fairly good
here. They won’t go far, and before it gets dark we’ll tie them up.”
Away to the left they could see a deep valley running up to enormously
high mountains. Snow lay everywhere on their crests, and even in the
valley, down to within a few hundred feet of the level of the little
lake beside which they camped.
At supper Jack asked Hugh’s opinion where they were and whither they
were going.
“Well,” said Hugh, “it’s a pretty sure thing that we can’t go any
farther up this stream. There’s a wall a thousand feet high in front of
us and on both sides, but I guess we can get up here to the left by
climbing that point of rocks. When we do that we’ll get into the snow
banks right off, and I don’t know that there’s much profit for us in
that. However, we can try it. I believe that if we get up there, on or
close to the snow, we’ll have the everlasting bulge on the flies, for I
don’t think they’ll follow us there.”
There was plenty of wood here, and that night they sat about a good camp
fire. The horses had been picketed where they could feed and yet would
not interfere with each other. Night had settled down cold and frosty
and the mosquitoes had ceased to trouble them.
“To-morrow or next day,” said Hugh, “I’d like to see where that big
river comes from that we followed up all to-day. I expect it comes down
out of that valley and from the big snow, and I reckon we lost it by
keeping away to the right. It’s a good thing that we didn’t have to
cross it, for if we had I think we’d have all been swimming. There’s a
terrible lot of water coming down from these mountains, and this valley
drains a big lot of them.”
“And of course, it all goes into the lakes, doesn’t it, Hugh?” asked
Jack.
“Sure,” said Hugh, “that’s the only place it can go.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’d rather travel through a lot of brush than try to
get across a big swift river like that.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “you’re right about that. It’s mean to be caught in a
stream, especially when you’re not fixed for it. I remember, years ago,
trying to take some cattle across the Running Water and being carried
down. My horse got scared and commenced to flounder and I rolled off to
help. It was in winter, and I had an old-fashioned army overcoat on and
got kind of rolled up in it, and I reckon I would have drowned if the
cape of the coat hadn’t caught on a limb of a dead tree that was
sticking out over the water and held me there until some of the boys
came along and pulled me out.”
“That must have been a close call, White Bull,” said Joe.
“Yes,” answered Hugh, “it was close enough. I don’t want one any
closer.”
“Now, White Bull,” Joe went on, “can we climb this point of the mountain
over here? If we do we’ll go up pretty near to the head of that big
river you speak of and cross it where it is only a little small stream.”
“I don’t know yet whether we can get up here or not. We’ll tell in the
morning,” Hugh replied, “but if we can, I think we’ll find good
traveling right up over the snow banks and we may find a place up there
where we can camp. I don’t feel any way sure that we’ll find a place
where we can get feed for the horses. We’ll know more about that when we
get up there. If we can’t find feed, why, then we’ll have to come back
and camp here or else find another trail down into the valley of the
main river, and take the horses down there over night.”
When Jack went down to the shore of the lake the next morning, he was
interested to see a pair of little harlequin ducks swimming close to the
beach. He recognized them from colored pictures that he had seen of the
species, and felt sure that the birds must be breeding somewhere about.
Looking at them a second time, however, he saw that both birds were
males. They made him think of the time of the year, and he realized that
now, of course, the females would be sitting on their eggs, while the
males would be enjoying a bachelor existence and getting ready to shed
their winter plumage and to put on their brief summer dress.
As Jack squatted on a rock, rubbing his hands, face and head with the
icy water, his eyes were busy searching the mountainside for signs of
living creatures. With the naked eye he could see no game high up on the
mountain, but just as he was about to turn from the shore, he happened
to look up the lake and there, lying in a sort of cave in the rocks,
only a short distance away, was a white goat. The same impulse to shoot
that he had felt yesterday assailed him, but he did not yield to it.
Instead, he felt rather ashamed of his desire to kill.
At breakfast he told Hugh about the goat, and his friend rather laughed
at him and said, “Wait until you have been out a few weeks and then you
won’t be so anxious to kill things, unless you need to. I have seen that
every time you go back East you catch a little of the pilgrim fever, and
you have to be out here for a week or two before you can shake off the
disease.”
“Maybe you’re right, Hugh,” said Jack. “It does seem pretty silly to
want to kill every wild thing I see.”
“Well, yes,” rejoined Hugh, “there’s no reason for killing anything
without you’ve got some use for it. If you need a shirt or a pair of
buckskin pants, kill what hides you need and have your clothing made, or
if you need food, kill what you want to eat, but don’t shoot at things
just to see whether you can hit them or not. That’s just a pilgrim
trick, and you’ve been out here too long to be guilty of things like
that.”
“Now, I tell you what, boys,” said Hugh, after breakfast was over,
stooping over the fire to pick up a brand with which to light his pipe,
“we don’t know what there is up above us here. We don’t even know that
we can climb this hill. Now, what do you say to leaving the pack horses
here and taking the saddle horses and going off to prospect? It isn’t
very far, and if we can find a good camping place we can come back here
and get the horses and take them up there.”
“Why,” said Jack, “that seems to me the best thing to do. We don’t want
to pack up and take a train up there and then find that we’ve got to
drive back and unpack and camp here again.”
“No,” said Hugh, “we don’t, and I believe we might as well go up first
and find out where we’re going. There’s one thing, though, that we’d
better do,” he went on, “I’ve an idea that there’s some bears up here,
and likely bears that haven’t been hunted much. I believe that it would
be a good idea for us to hoist up the main part of our grub into one of
these trees and tie it there, so that if a bear should come into camp he
won’t tear it all to pieces. Suppose you boys get a couple of sling
ropes and we’ll take our flour and bacon and coffee and sugar and put it
in a safe place.”
The boys brought the sling ropes and before long two stout young pine
trees were each decorated with a couple of large bundles. Then they
saddled and Jack said to Joe, “If any bears should come prowling around
here, Joe, won’t they stampede the horses, and make trouble for us?”
“I guess they might,” said Joe. “We ought to tie ’em up tight.”
Joe took the ax, and going a few steps down the creek, cut some stout
alder stems from which he manufactured half a dozen strong picket pins,
then going out to where the horses were, they drove a second pin close
to each picket pin that stood in the ground, so that the heads of the
two pins crossed and supported each other.
“Now,” said Joe, “take a half hitch around these two pins with the
lariat and I’ll bet the pack horses can’t get away.”
Hugh, who saw what they were doing, nodded approval, and presently they
all climbed into the saddles, and Hugh leading the way, they crossed the
little brook which flowed out from the lake and headed toward the point
of the mountain which they hoped to climb. Before they had reached it
Hugh found a game trail and followed it, for he knew, as all mountain
men do, that game always selects the easiest road across natural
obstacles. The climb was neither steep nor long, though it was a little
slippery, for the upper end of the trail was wet with snow that had just
melted. When they emerged on top of the shoulder, they could see
extending up the valley before them a long level snow bank, while to the
right the steep slope was everywhere strewn with huge boulders and rock
fragments that had rolled down from the mountainside; some in past ages
and some very recently.
Hugh paused until the two boys came up and then said, “We may as well
keep up here along the main valley and see how far we can go and what we
can find. We could not take the horses along the mountainside to the
west. If we go that way we’ll have to go on foot. I’d like to see what
there is on the other side of that high wall. I believe it’s Pacific
Coast water.”
“Yes, Hugh,” said Jack, “let’s go on up the valley and maybe we can
cross over to those pine trees on the other side. It looks as if there
might be a good camping place there, though I don’t see any feed for the
horses.”
“Come on then,” said Hugh.
For a mile or more they rode slowly on over the hard snow field, into
which the horses hoofs did not sink at all. On the right rose first a
steep slope covered with huge angular rock fragments, and then above
that successive walls of vertical cliff, in each recess and crevice of
which there was a drift of snow. To the left, the snow field sloped
gradually to an almost flat surface of rock, over which flowed a hundred
little trickles of water. There was, here and there, a little soil,
green with springing grass or weed blades and in many places spangled
with beautiful alpine flowers of variegated colors.
At one place Jack dismounted and gathered a handful of these plants,
which he looked at as they rode along. Many of them were much like the
dog-tooth violet found in the woods in the East in the early spring,
others looked something like dandelions, but had tall, straight stems;
still others were like the columbine of early summer, but instead of
being red were blue and white. All were beautiful and fresh, and all
were growing within a short distance of the edge of the snow banks and
were watered by the cold trickle from the melting snow.
As they went on the travelers could see at the end of the valley, now
close to them, a great wall of rock over which plunged cataracts of
white water, while from the mountains on the right came sharp gray
lines, which as they drew near them, Jack recognized as moraines--the
soil and gravel pushed to one side by the progress of a glacier. He felt
sure that this valley along which they were traveling, and perhaps also
the narrow valley in which lay the river and the great lakes, had ages
ago been carved out of the solid mountains by some vast glacier, such as
he had seen two years before on the British Columbia coast and the work
of which Mr. Fannin had more than once clearly explained to him.
They were riding quietly along, looking at the mountains, the snow
fields and the flower beds when, almost from beneath the feet of Hugh’s
horse, a bird spotted white and brown rose from the ground and, with a
loud cackle, scaled off ahead of them and alighting on a rock, stood
with head and tail up, still uttering a sharp cry. Jack recognized it at
once as a ptarmigan and reached for his rifle to see whether he could
kill it, but Hugh, who had looked around, called back to him, “I
wouldn’t shoot at it, son. You see these birds have their nests now, and
if you kill the old birds that means that the young ones will not be
hatched. Besides that, the old ones are not fit to eat now.”
“That’s so, Hugh, I have got to teach myself not to want to kill
everything that I see. I’m a regular pilgrim about that, and you’ll have
to watch me, and I’ll watch myself, too.”
A little farther along they left the snow bank and pushed on over bare
rounded stones, some of them of great size. On the mountain above him
Jack saw two great moraines, gradually approaching one another, one
coming down from the right and one from the left, but with a wide space
between their lower ends. He was looking at this, when, without warning,
he heard all about him the rustle of wings and sweet chirping whistles,
and suddenly a large flock of gray-crowned finches alighted on the
ground and on the stones about him. They walked busily hither and
thither picking up something, though he could not see what, and it
seemed impossible that there could be seeds or any other vegetable food
on the bare rocks. The birds were absolutely tame and paid no attention
to the animals, except when they walked close to them; then a few wing
beats would take the threatened bird out of the horse’s way, and it
would alight and again begin to feed. The ashy crown of the head, the
brown body and the rosy tinge of the upper and lower parts were plainly
to be seen, and Jack thought again that he had never known such
beautiful little birds, or any that seemed so tame or confiding.
By this time the precipice at the head of the valley was close to them
and they were obliged to turn to the left and cross the stream, which,
though wide and turbulent, was not deep. On the east side the land rose
sharply in one or two terraces, and then the travelers found themselves
on another snow bank, just beyond which rose some stunted pine timber.
At the edge of this they halted to take a look back over the valley, and
when they did so, Hugh said, “Well, I reckon we are smart hunters; look
over there.”
The boys looked, and not half a mile below where they had passed along,
but hidden from them during their passage by several rocky elevations,
were seen three bears, one large and two very small ones. They were
working along the hillside, apparently looki
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/45443