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.