KOOTENAY
I
When Fatbald Tschirikov would take his seat before the fireplace his
glance went first backward and downward, fear seemed to flatten his
large ears against his head, and he lowered his hands to the
chair-arms, testing in doubt the strength of the birchen frame. Next
would his eyeballs roll, and his mouth gape in readiness for a
screech while he lowered himself, fearful even unto anguish, into the
vast rawhide seat; a very hammock, but liable to split. A smirk
succeeded, the signal for applause from his four Indian wives, then a
wriggle or two adjusted him for the day. No. 1 wife cast the bison
robe to cover him. No. 2 served the soup wherewith he greased
himself most amply, slopping his way through the mess. No. 3 loaded
his meerschaum pipe. No. 4 stood by to run for the help of the tribe
if aught went wrong. Afterwards he would remark that the four of
them were canaille, and might attend their own several funerals for
all he cared. At this token of his gratitude they crept away on
tiptoe into the lean-to kitchen.
The clay fireplace in front of him was full of logs set upright and
aflame as though an ox were to roast. The cabin walls were of
cottonwood trunks notched at the ends and dovetailed where they
crossed, the chinks between them being filled with blocks of wood,
moss, and a daub of mud. No air got in or out save when some
malefactor, a wife perchance, opened the front door. Then Fatbald
screamed reproaches in Russian, Samoyed, French, Blackfoot, Kutenais,
and general profanity mixed, hot, crescendo, and culminating in a
volley of good round English damns, fortissimo.
Outside it might be twenty to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit in
a world of dazzling sunshine and glittering snowdrift. Northward
from the front door extended the frozen levels of Kootenay Lake some
ninety miles, walled by austere forest, and still, white dreaming
Alps. And yonder, fifty miles or so from the trading post, was a
little headland jutting from the right. As far back as 1825--some
fifteen years ago--the Hudson's Bay voyageurs, making a night camp,
where now is the Bluebell mine, had been astonished by a flow of
molten metal from under their cooking fire. The stuff was lead, the
first discovery of mineral in all the regions west of the
Mississippi, and the Hudson's Bay Company was quick to seize
advantage from the find. They built a small stone smelter with a
pyramid of roof, still standing when I saw the place in 1889, but
gone when I returned in 1913. There they were wont to make bullets
for use in the Indian trade. They were good bullets, hard, part
silver as it happened, but nobody knew that. The Hydahs of Queen
Charlotte Islands once made and used gold bullets, rather too soft,
they said, but better than none at all.
In his mind old Tschirikov was rather concerned about the lead mine
yonder, a long day's march to the north. Storm--these three years
past his dear adopted son--was there, with a bullet mold found in the
bos'n's locker aboard the _Beaver_, making some bullets for the
Kutenais. A weary while away, weary weeks. The old man had made up
his mind to live until Storm came home, rather than trust his funeral
to a pack of useless wives.
He spoke many languages, and the blend was thickened into a husky
wheeze. Nobody on earth excepting Storm knew what he talked about.
The American trapper who squatted in a corner of the room, lacing the
web of a snowshoe, heard Fatbald muttering feebly through the soup,
something which ended
"--dobra fils delate Klahowya mik, eh, hombre?"
In Russian, French, Chinook and Eskimo, English and Spanish, this,
being interpreted, meant: "I fear that my good son has gone to
heaven, eh, man?"
"Fine day, sure," responded the trapper indulgently, "and a right
smart snap of cold."
The husky dog asleep at Fatbald's feet lifted his gray muzzle,
snuffing something new, pricked his ears forward, muttered a rumbling
growl, then of a sudden leaped at the door, yelping, "He's coming!
Coming!" He did not speak in English, but in Dog, a language of even
wider distribution.
Somebody was coming. The trapper went to peer through a little
frosted windowpane. Somebody was coming with a sturdy shout to greet
the house. There were yelps of a dog team to all the pups at home,
the swish of carriole and snowshoes, brisk orders given in the
Kutenais, and stampings to shake the snow off moccasins. The husky
was yelling out joyful adjectives as he jumped up and down at the
door, then as it opened he leaped high for a kiss while the man
stooped low to get in under the lintel.
This fellow was by no means the subdued but truculent Bill Fright of
three years back. Standing six foot and just beginning to widen at
the shoulders, he was lean, hard, hale, and deep-tanned as an Indian.
No savage ever whelped had steel-blue eyes like his that flashed and
glittered with power, or such a mane of sun-gold hair, or flush of
eager blood to light the skin as though with an inner lamp.
He slipped his hands out of the fur mitts, shook off the frost rime
from his buckskin shirt so that the heavy shoulder fringes pattered
like rain on leaves, then with a grin which showed a white flash of
teeth he chucked his beaver cap at Tschirikov. "Hello! hello!" He
spoke in Kutenais. "How's fleas, and the little nits, eh, Daddy
Fat-face?"
"La porte! la porte!"
"Oh, the frowst!" Storm slammed the door to.
"Storms-all-the-time," the old man wheezed in Kutenais, "you deafen
me."
"All right, old chief, we'll have the whelps loose."
He flung open the trade-room door, and out of the freezing store
tumbled a heap of children head-over-heels and shrilling Indian war
whoops, leaping at him, clamoring the news, the wagers on his first
kiss, the games which he must play, and how they wanted dinner. Had
he any gifts?
They got him down on the floor, climbed all over him, went through
the pockets of his hunting shirt. Yes, there were gifts! For each a
little leaden redskin warrior cast in a special mold of his own
carving. The four wives had been in violent collisions getting him
four meals ready all at once; but now let the food burn while they
shared the scrimmage for the toys.
Presently there was silence, because the old man, the wives, and all
the offspring watched with enormous solemnity while Storm sat on the
floor cross-legged to a bowl of berry pemmican, a dish of three large
trouts, and a stew of camas.
In his own corner the American was being fed, apart, not quite as a
guest, nor yet as a prisoner. These people would not let him starve
or suffer, but they made him doubt the nature of his welcome.
This new arrival, the trapper reckoned, was certainly by his coloring
a white man, but in his speech and manners Indian, perhaps the old
man's son, undoubtedly the master of the house, honored, obeyed, and
loved. Was he husband to these four women, father of all these
children? Surely too young.
He seemed to have traveled far, and at his topmost speed, to be
ravenous, weary, and now, after the meal and a pipe of wild tobacco,
right well disposed towards sleep. He dismissed the women and
children to their supper in the kitchen, kissed the old man who was
fast asleep in the chair, then crossed to his bed and lay down
looking at the fire while he smoked his pipe. It dropped upon the
robes.
"Oh, Secret Helper, I come!" he muttered softly.
Through the closed eyelids he felt the flicker of the firelight. He
smelled in fresh warm air a fragrance from some burning herb, then
heard a low voice at prayer.
"Oh, Holy Spirit in the Sun!
"Hear, Old Man!
"Listen, oh dear Above-people!
"Hear me, Under-water-people!
"I purify my body that my prayers may reach your hearing."
The scene before Storm's eyes had changed. In a moment he had passed
to Rain's lodge, more than a hundred miles to the northward.
The firelight flickered now upon the sloping wall of a tipi, and
through the skins of the lodge covering poured sunshine, mellowed as
though it flowed from gold-stained ancient glass.
Rain knelt on the far side of her hearth fire, and naked down to the
loins she let her body sway to the rhythm of the prayer, while she
bathed her hands, arms, shoulders, and breast in the smoke of burning
herbs.
"I purify myself. O Holy Animals, intercede for me. If you have
spirit-power, pray for me that my spirit, O Buffalo, may be strong to
overrun all enemies; O Eagle, that it may soar far up above the
earth-mists; O Wolf, that it may be subtle to see and understand; O
Owl, that it may see far through the darkness; O Deer, that I may run
fast and far upon my errands.
"Hear me, O Spirit in the Sun! I ask the Holy Animals, so much
stronger, wiser, swifter, more powerful than poor Rain, to plead for
me to you, that I may have spirit-strength to help my people when
they are in need.
"My Secret Helper! Hiawatha! Men come who are very unhappy. Tell
me of their needs, and show me how to help them.
"Send blessings to Storm, dear Spirit. Pity him, and help him. Send
him to me, for he needs all my love."
She looked up, across the smoke of the hearth, and there was Storm,
who lay on the couch, his shoulders against the back rest, in the
chief's place facing the door of the tent. She was ever so glad to
see him. "You got home quick," she said. She sat back on her heels,
and drew up a sheet of milk-white antelope skin about her shoulders,
and the fringe of little dew claws tinkled softly.
"The sun," he answered, "was still two hours high when I got home."
"Your animal must have been very hungry?"
"When it was fed it felt quite sleepy, so I left it and came to you,
dear Secret Helper."
"Do you remember," she spoke wistfully, "in the long-ago time when we
were little? How seldom we could both leave our poor animals at the
same hours! How rare our Dreamland meetings! Oh, the long waitings
for you at the Tuft of Moss!"
"Yes, Dream. I'd leave my animal on board of the old barge in London
River, but before I made the Tuft of Moss the sun was up over these
western mountains, and your mother shaking your animal to turn out
for the day's work.
"Then, you remember, I was on board the _Beaver_ off the Horn, when
your nights and mine began to close in together, so that I saw you
every night watch below. Ever since I came ashore we've had whole
nights together--three years now."
"Don't be so stupid, Storm. The times of the Sun Spirit are not
changed. The Ruler cannot change. Only our Sun-power grows."
Now, Storm would hold as dogma that the sun keeps different hours in
Oregon and in England, and therefore the Spirit in the Sun must pass
from London River to the Kootenay, a matter of six hours. This to
Rain's mind was false doctrine, a flagrant heresy. The Holy Spirit
in the Sun must shine alike, with equal hours at the same time, upon
the unjust in England and on the just west of the Rocky Mountains.
Here was a point in theology on which they always quarreled, without
being a bit the wiser or one whit the better. Neither had grasped
the thought that the Great Spirit is everywhere, and shines even
within ourselves, while the good sun keeps appointed seasons, days
and hours.
If none of us were theologians, all of us might be Christians.
After the squabble, Rain and Storm agreed that anyway their
"medicine" grew stronger. That word may need explaining in its
Indian sense. A physician in the French is "médecin," his treatment
in the English "medicine." But when a French voyageur would use the
word among the Western Indians, they understood quite in a different
way, for to them a doctor's drug was magic, so the word "medicine"
applied in time to all things magical, mysterious, in contact with
worlds unseen.
To Storm and Rain their medicine, which grew stronger day by day, was
the power which we call psychic, meaning awareness and activity
outside the bodily senses. The gift is common, its cultivation rare,
for to these lovers it was given in great strength and quick
development. Not knowing how to explain the whole of this deep
mystery, I venture only to suggest that Rain's mother, a sacred woman
of the Blackfeet, and Storm's mother, a Quaker mystic among the
English, had met together in the planes of spirit-being, and by their
love were helping these children onward.
"At first," said Rain, "when mother went over the Wolf Trail, I was,
oh, so lonely here! You used to come, to comfort me. I only heard
your voice, and when I saw you at last you were like a ghost. I saw
the lodge poles through you, and was so frightened! Now you grow
clear, just like a person, making my couch all rumpled."
"Come, sit beside me, Dream!"
"Not now," she answered gently. "I made the holy rites because two
men are coming here."
"Who are they?"
"Two men came up the pass, Blackfeet, and chiefs. They have killed
an elk, to bring the meat and skin, a pack-horse load, to hang up at
the door of my lodge. They all do that who come, else must I hunt,
and they would wait half a day before they saw me. These men have
come from the Great Plains, a seven sun's journey, to ask my help in
trouble. They pray so earnestly to the Sun! One of them has a
daughter, the other a boy, in love, but these poor lovers are parted
because the young man is a prisoner with the Sparrowhawks. The
fathers come to ask me if he lives. And I must show them how to get
the young warrior back. Else will the girl think that her heart is
broken, and that is just as bad as a broken heart."
"How far away are these fathers?"
"They will come just before the sun sets. They have so little hope.
They do not truly believe that I can help them, but the girl pleaded,
and her mother nagged, so of course they had to come. I will send
them away in the morning with big hearts. The Sun has pity on them."
"Rain, dear," he asked, "when I got home I found a white man there.
I didn't speak and greet him, because I didn't know if he is good.
Is he good?"
"I see a white trapper," she said, "and a girl grieving for him
because she jilted him, and cannot get him back. She never will--the
cat! Her name is Nan. Far in the East she lives, by the salt
water--her fingers so tired, hemming shirts all day! How I do pity
these poor washed-out squaws of your Race! Slaves they are! Slaves!"
"But the trapper?"
"Oh, him? Made too free with the Kutenais women, so some of my good
mountaineers made bold to burn his cabin. He came to your lodge for
refuge, the Kutenais at his heels. They wait for you, so angry too!"
"Why do they wait for me?"
"They want to ask you first before they kill him, because, if you say
yes, his ghost will haunt you, not them. They are artful, these
Kutenais."
"Shall I let them have him?"
"Your guest?"
"Of course not. I can't."
"He has hunted and brought good meat when they were all afraid of
famine. He nurses the old Fatbald. The children's spirits plead for
him. He will be your friend, that is, at first, dear. I shall be
jealous. Yes, I'll be nasty."
"All right. Why did you send me home in such a hurry? The old man
seems all right."
"The flame will flicker to-night, and then go out. He willed to live
until he could see you, Storm. Don't laugh at him to-night."
"I promise. And when he is dead, Rain, may I come to you on Earth?"
"No, you must settle affairs. The household would starve if you left
them now, and the tribe need you badly. Three months must pass
before you are free to come."
"Haven't I waited these three years, and all the years before that?"
"Cry-baby! Have I not waited? Besides, I don't think I want to see
you in your meat body. No. How often do you bathe?"
"Wheugh! Not in this weather, not in winter. In summer, when it's
hot--yes."
"A Blackfoot warrior bathes daily."
"In winter?" He shuddered at the idea.
"Yes, in winter a sweat bath and a roll in the snow. How else could
he keep fit for the war trail?"
"Glad I'm not a Blackfoot!"
"Glad we're not married! So there! Storm, you'll bathe every day
from now on, or you come not to my lodge, son of a dirty tribe!"
"The English, dirty!"
"Savage, rude, wild, uncouth--with naughty tempers. Now go back to
your stupid body, for the Blackfoot chiefs draw near. I hear them.
I must pray to the Sun to smooth my temper too."
The fire blazed up strongly with a crackle of curling birch bark, and
Storm looked out from his bed to see old Fatbald's chief woman
putting on fresh logs.
"Two Bits," he called to her in Kutenais.
She looked round. "Awake?" she asked.
"Dear Two Bits, my Secret Helper is cruel and orders me to have a
bath every day. Isn't it awful?"
"Huh! Your Dream must be a Blackfoot. Mark you, it takes more than
a daily bath to wash off their dirty deeds."
"You'll get the sweat lodge ready?"
"You'll catch your death," she answered gloomily, "and then of course
we'll all starve."
She went out grumbling to get the sweat house ready. But Two Bits
always grumbled, and never in her life had risked a bath, having no
dirty deeds to wash away.
The old man slept, and Storm lay watching him. Fatbald would awaken
presently and demand to have his back scratched.
"Say," the American trapper, determined to be treated no longer as a
log on the woodpile, came over to the hearth and stood confronting
Storm, "do you talk white?"
Storm sat up yawning, stretched himself, looked at the trapper,
laughed, offered his hand. "Sorry," he said, and the English felt
heavy, like bullets in his mouth. "English--I half forget--English,
I speak no word three years. Talk white, eh? So you're American!"
The mother tongue came easier. "I knew an American once, name of
Silas."
"Silas, what?"
"Just Silas. Do your tribe have two names? I had two, once."
"Hiram J. Kant's my name."
"I asked no question, did I? You are my guest. I do not ax you why
you tried to make free with women of my tribe, or why the men burned
you out, or why you took cover here, or why my people wait my leave
to kill you."
"How did you know all that? It's more 'en these Injuns know, and I
seen they telled you nothin'. They nary looked my way."
"Who told me about Nan?"
The American went white, and shrank against the wall.
"What d'ye mean?" he asked under his breath. "I ain't been
asleep--to talk in my sleep since you come."
Storm's eyes made everything else blind dark to the American.
"Far east," he said, "by the Atlantic coast, Nan sits at her window,
sewing all day long, shirts, always shirts. Her fingers are stiff
with cramp, and she cries and cries."
"What business is that of yours? You leave my private affairs to me.
What do you know, anyways?"
"Nothing much, shipmate. It's your affair that you'll take oath to
leave our women here alone, or their men kill you when you cross that
doorstep. Take oath, swear to God that you leave the women of the
Kutenais alone, or you cross the doorstep now."
He went to the doorway, and stood with his hand on the latch.
"You take your choice," he said.
"I ain't panting any," said the American disdainfully, "after your
damned homely old squaws."
"On your oath?"'
"Honest to God!"
"See that you keep your word."
The old man stirred, and burbled.
"He's waking up," said Storm. "You take my bed. Well, daddy?" He
spoke in Kutenais. "Want your back scratched?"
"Come here, my son."
"Here, daddy. What's up?"
"Secrets, my son, secrets. Bend your head down, listen. Don't tell
these women."
"Not a word."
"Speak French. I'm going to leave them. I shall be wafted, wafted,
like a thistledown, to my brother's palace at Irkutsk. Then we go,
he and I, to Peterborg, to the winter palace, to the court ball--the
Bal Masque, my brother as Puncinello--so fat--ho! ho! He is too fat
to be good form. But I--don't breathe a word--I go as the
Sansculotte, the Revolutionary of the Red Terror, with wild hair, and
the tricolor sash. Yes, even the pantaloons--to terrify the Court.
Her Imperial Majesty the Tsarevna will faint at the sight of a
Sansculotte. Ah! there's the practical joke, to make our Court of
Russia expect Madame Guillotine, the madam who thinks us all too tall
to be quite in the mode, too tall by a head.
"A Sansculotte, yes, but not without a shirt--no--no. That would be
too immoral. Get out a dress shirt with my Mechlin ruffles. And
really the striped waistcoat does make most subtle suggestion of a
graceful figure. Tatata--_quel horreur_! Not the rude breeches with
iron buckles. Wheu! And these so scratchy, disgustingly coarse gray
stockings. Take them away! Burn them! Yes, dove-colored
stockinette, and for a graceful contrast the egg-blue swallow-tails
with salmon-colored revers. And _comme la mode_ my diamond fob, of
course--tut tut tut--to illustrate the complexion of a patch here--as
though by accident, carelessly, _sans gêne_. Ah! this black cocked
hat with its tricolor plume, and gold tassels above the
shoulders--oh, very saucy! Ivan! My quizzing glass! of course.
Beast! Why, they'll be the rage next season! Not Sansculotte? Pig!
Am I not Orthodox? _Noblesse oblige_!
"Hark, Storm! Violin, 'cello, harpischord, and flute. Why, 'tis the
Herr Professor Beethoven's new minuet! Mad'moiselle in homage,
adorable! Thy bridal crown, Pavlova! My wife! My darling--thy love
pours through me as Neva bathes her isles. No star dare shine where
thy light gleams. Rose of the nightless summer. Oh, petal fingers
thrill my hand! Am I not shadow to enhance thy sunshine? And in my
reverent homage bow before thee.
"The music changes. 'Tis the Emperor's hymn. A most fatiguing
homemade tune. And here come their Imperial Majesties the Tsar and
Tsarevna, advancing through the lane of courtiers. She wears the
Orlov diamond _en corsage_, but don't you think this old Russian
court dress rather dowdy? Nicholas has the new side-whiskers. I
must remember. I really must ask my barber if---- What fun, what a
joke! Olga, my Little Fur Seal, I shall present you as my wife--my
bride in hairy sealskin breeches--Eskimo! The Tsarevna and the Grand
Duchesses will faint in heaps, and order my head chopped off. All
Peterborg convulsed at my last joke. Now, don't you scratch my face,
dear. No. Not here! Why, these insipid dolls in diamonds and
starch are not real flesh and blood, passion and tenderness, as you
are, my little savage. But really you shouldn't scratch my face at a
court ball. _Démodé_, my dear, _outré_. You hold my gloves instead,
for the zakouska. We will have cognac and one red mushroom, eh?
"Oh, dear me! Paradise of course, my dear Storm, and all the
fountains playing, but who invites these old Haidah wives of mine and
the Kutenais harem as well? They must not meet, or there'll be such
a row. And for heaven's sake don't let them see my Little Fur Seal,
or any of them meet Pavlova. Good gracious, here's my old Samoyed
wife as well! What a reunion! How badly arranged! They'll never
get on together. Don't let my past wives catch me in Heaven--it's
really too disgusting. I am busy. Tell them I haven't the honor of
their acquaintance. Olga! Be reasonable. None of them have any
manners. Yes, I admit they fail to do me justice, biting, clawing,
screeching. Canaille! Hags! Oh, not at all a good selection to
meet me in Paradise. The arrangements here are really deplorable!
Help! Help! Woman, that's my face----
"Ah! Brother! Is that you?"
The dying man shoved Storm aside, reached out his arms, his face most
strangely boyish. "Alexei!" he said. "Let's play at wives and
husbands!"
Storm saw the spirit departing from the worn-out, ruined body of his
friend.
II
Daily the widows mourned. Ah hai-i-i ahee-ee! for the White Chief,
Many Wives hai-ai-ya-hai! Whose medicine was so strong that the hair
grew out at the wrong end of his head? Ya-a-a-hai! Whose body
needed the tribe, the dogs, and carrioles lashed abreast, to carry
awai-i-i-ya-hai-i-i. Yow-ow-ow-o! And he wanted to be buried up a
tree-ee-ee-hee! Aye, yow-ow-ow! Ahooo-oo-boohoo-oo-oo-oo-ahai-i!
At meals, or otherwise when ordered by the white men to shut up, and
hold their row-ow-ow-aeou! they became placid, even moderately
cheerful, and squabbled a little in the kitchen about the division of
Fatbald's property.
It was at such an interval that Storm took Hiram into the trade room
where one's breath made clouds. They sat on bales of furs
considering a pack of sulphur from the Cascade volcanoes, a sack of
willow charcoal, and ten alforgas of wood ash washed, strained, and
dried into gray niter with a nice gun-powder perfume. These the
American approved, but he demanded black lead to waterproof the
gunpowder, when made, "Unless," he said, "you want it for liquid face
paint."
As for Storm's cake of explosive, made already and with great pride
set out for inspection: "Shucks," said the trapper, "ef that ain't
the complete benighted, effete, old-country Britisher! Want it as
mush for breakfast, or to drown kittens in?
"And yet, I dunno. It's shorely a safety gunpowder this, all right.
No danger of going off bang--just mammie's pap warranted safe for
children."
"Make the stuff yourself then," said Storm indignantly.
"That's the proposition," answered the American; "and what do I get?"
"I'll replace the outfit them Injuns burned. You 'elps yourself."
"Done!"
The American had out a clasp knife, and whittled the edge of a
packing case.
"And, say! When you auctions off them widders----"
"They're not my widders."
"Eh? Not your widders yet? Waal, now I kind of thought you was fell
heir to them widders. Marrying all four?"
"None."
"'Cause ef they come reasonable I'm open to dicker for Two Bits."
"Hiram, hadn't you better wake up?"
"Eh? Now I kinder reckoned I shorely was awake."
"This widder Two Bits owns this place."
"Well, did you hear me crying? I don't weep none."
"The Head Chief of the Lower Kutenais, young Sitting Wolf, happens to
be a widower. He's going to marry Two Bits."
"When she's through mourning for Many Wives, eh? Got it all fixed.
Now I sort of reckon the lady ain't having any. She's set her hat at
me."
"And Sitting Wolf? He had your winter quarters burned because you
looked at the women. He's jealous. His friend must have no other
friend 'cepting himself. His first wife looked sideways at a man--he
killed both. The man who looks at Two Bits is taking risks. Don't
get athwart his hawse. Don't foul his bows if you want to keep
afloat."
"All right--all right. How much will Sitting Wolf take to be sort of
Running Wolf over the sky line?"
"I think," Storm answered him, "it's much more like a case of Running
Hiram."
"You mean he'll chase me out of the doggone country?"
"He mentioned the idea, and the tribe woted in the affirmitude."
Here they were interrupted by a young warrior, a messenger from
Sitting Wolf and the tribal council, requesting Storm to attend them.
"We'll be right along," said Hiram.
But Storm looked at the American's hair, which was cropped at the
neck. "I wouldn't," he said earnestly.
"What's bitten you?" asked Hiram.
"A man with short hair ain't axed to sit with Injuns in council.
Wait till your hair grows, and you're asked to come."
"Is that so? Waal, of all the----"
Storm followed the messenger to a lodge covered with mats of rushes.
There in the chief's place opposite the door was Sitting Wolf,
dressed in his finest robe, and on his left in order of their rank
the leaders of the septs, very grave and formal. The white man was
asked to take his seat on the women's side of the lodge.
In front of the chief lay a bundle which he now opened, making a
prayer for each of the many coverings disclosed, until amid a
breathless hush--as when at the Roman Mass the Host is revealed to
the people--he took up the sacred pipe. Its bowl of red sandstone
came from the pipe-stone quarry in far-away Michigan, and the stem,
ancient, charged with mysterious power, was hung with eagle feathers.
The messenger, kneeling in homage, received the medicine pipe,
charged the bowl with tobacco, and after praying, lighted it with a
coal from the hearth.
Sitting Wolf stood to perform the culminating rite. He was a young
man in those days, by all accounts a gallant gentleman, lightly
built, graceful of bearing, his clear-cut face austere, now made
beautiful by reverence, by faith as he prayed. Filling his mouth
with smoke and blowing it in homage, he greeted first the Spirit in
the Sun, then by turn the Spirits of the Four Winds, and lastly
Mother Earth. Afterwards each of the leaders smoked in turn, once,
and Storm last of all, before the pipe was returned and covered up.
Before the end of this long ritual the sun had gone down behind the
westward heights, the hearth fire burned low, and the Indians were
huddled in their robes of elk or bison while Storm, with only his
deer-skin hunting dress, felt chilled to the bones. With the
covering of the pipe, Sitting Wolf ceased to be priest celebrant and
was the chief, jealous, envious, with something in his leathery dark
face sinister, boding. Storm knew that his own heirship to old
Tschirikov stripped Two Bits of great wealth, and the chief, who
intended to marry the widow, had been brooding over her losses.
"We have purified our bodies," began the chief indifferently, as one
who patters a set form of words, "with prayer have cleansed our
hearts, and with smoke of the sacred pipe-have cleared our heads for
counsel. Now for the leaders here, and for the tribe, I speak to you
Storm, adopted son and sole heir of him who has passed. He was our
friend, but never a priest, a chief, or leader in our tribe. Having
a sit-beside-him wife, he lived with other women out of wedlock,
according to the custom of his people, which by our law is very wrong.
"He came of a tribe beyond the western sea, you come of a tribe
beyond the eastern sea, and you have different customs. The question
of the council is, will you obey our laws?"
"Aye."
Sitting Wolf lifted his eyebrows as though surprised, turned down the
corners of his lips as if he were disappointed. If this white man
obeyed the tribal law, he could not well be fined or his property
made forfeit.
"Storm," he said, "we have watched you these three snows. We see,
all of us here, that in your tribe beyond the eastern sea, you came
of a bad father."
The challenge would have been insulting to an Indian, but Storm
assented easily.
"Aye," he said--"aye."
"Poor chap!" was the inner thought, "Thinks I'm robbing him of a
trade house full of furs, three hundred ponies in pasture, five
canoes, no end of saddles and harness, the dog teams, and carrioles."
"Aye," he said, "a bad father."
"I speak as chief," continued the envious Sitting Wolf, and his
upward glance was full of menace now. "I speak for your good.
"We know that your father was bad because your riding is a sin, and
the Sun clouds his face at the sight. Your seat in a canoe wakes the
winds to howl. Your feet on the trail break sticks and stumble over
roots to frighten away the game and affront the Holy Animals. You
have an ill-trained nose which cannot smell a real bear at ten paces.
Your sight may be long and keen, but you have never learned to note
the thing which moves at a distance. Your arrows are a danger to us,
and with the medicine iron your bullets hit the sky, offending the
Above Spirits. Your fishing amuses the fish, but affronts the
Under-water Spirits. You never pray for the help of the Holy
Animals. You say you do your best. You try, but one who does not
succeed becomes a danger to his comrades whether in running buffalo
or on the war trail. Until you can feed and defend a woman and help
in the tribe's defense, you are not fit to marry among my people. We
live too near the Lodge of the Hunger Spirit to take such risks as
that. Later I shall speak more of my mind, but first the medicine
man has words to say."
Storm was not at all pleased. Truth is void of manners, and yet has
a front and a back, an outside and an inside. Here was only the
outside of Truth spoken in anger, with ill-veiled intention of
enmity, by one who had always seemed to be a friend.
Now spoke the withered medicine man, kindly, fatuous Beaver Tail, who
saw another aspect of the Truth, and loved a platitude.
"White Man, our chief has spoken, and of course his words are my
words. Yet these three winters, friends, and not your enemies, have
watched you, and a friend speaks now. Bad was your father, yet you
are the son of a good woman."
Storm looked up, and the sullen resentment seemed to vanish from his
face.
"Sitting Wolf, as chief," said the old man, "speaks to your father's
son. I as priest speak to your mother's son. She gave you strength
and staying power. The work you do should kill the strongest of our
young men. She gave you also a quick mind, a straight tongue, a good
heart. For these, not for your skill as a hunter or warrior, we make
you a member of our tribe, and subject to our laws."
"Artful old devil!" was the white man's inner thought. "He wants me
subject to the tribal law, so that the chief can claim old Fatbald's
property."
"Go on," he said, eager to fathom the plot which underlay these
compliments.
"Your Dream," continued _Beaver_ Tail, under his breath, his hands
making signs of prayer, "your Secret Helper is a strong and very holy
animal. Your medicine is becoming powerful." He smiled engagingly,
frankly. "Your white man's cunning is of use to us. We have decided
to make you a member of this council."
Storm bent his head in acknowledgment. "Does the old humbug," he
wondered, "think he is fooling me? If I'm a member of tribe and
council they'll claim that I'm subject to the chief--unfit to hold
property unless he adopts me as brother, to look after me, to look
after the old man's wealth."
Sitting Wolf had heard the medicine man's talk with ill-concealed
impatience. "As member of tribe and council," he said, "open your
heart to us, young man, as to the affairs of our friend who has
departed."
Swift as a flash of lightning Storm's mind went back to Margate beach
of a Sunday afternoon. Once more he was Bill Fright in ragged slacks
and jersey, where Dolly, the cuddlesome little 'tweenie, sat between
his knees upon the sands. She had cotton gloves to hide her grubby
hands, and these must not be touched lest he should soil their
new-washed whiteness, though he might kiss the place where the hair
tickled just close behind her ear. "No, silly! The left ear!" Then
she recited word for word the very latest squabble between her
mistress, Lady Travis, and Sir Julian--a cat-and-dog fight, no less.
A tear ran down Storm's cheek. If only to take a penn'orth of
shrimps for mother's tea on board the _Polly Phemus_ at the quay
side, he would forfeit his share to these painted savages. Stanch
friends and earnest instructors had they been: Sitting Wolf in
woodcraft, horsemanship, and canoe work, Beaver Tail in the language,
the sign talk, herb lore, hypnotic medicine, and the deep things of
Kutenais religion. What if the medicine man trapped him in tribal
and council membership that the chief might overrule his claim on
Fatbald's wealth! These Indians were the only friends he had, or
ever could have now, on earth.
He did not think of Rain as of the earth. His body had never dared
to worship her, his love was as yet untarnished by any breath of
passion. She was of the spirit, and in the spirit beloved, beyond,
above all earthly creatures, a priestess serving at the Apse of Ice,
a High Place sacred to the All-Father.
He looked at the grave faces of his friends, knowing them all so
deeply, loving them so dearly. There were no braver men on earth,
none more chaste, religious, hospitable, sweet-tempered, honorable
than these large-handed, large-footed, great-hearted mountaineers.
He was proud to have their friendship, and yet in the recesses of his
soul he was a man, and these were only children, who painted their
faces.
One must have lived alone with savages before one realizes that in
the most ignorant white man of the Northlands there resides age-long
experience, a will which never rests, a high authority and
sovereignty commanding their obedience.
Rough on the surface only, Storm in the soul of him was a man of
unusual force, with powers far beyond the average of his race.
Humbly and simply as he spoke to these Indians his words bit deep,
his power gripped their hearts, while still they were unconscious, as
he was himself, of anything unusual.
"My words are air, just frosty clouds of air. See." The lodge was
so cold that his breath showed white as he spoke. "Only my hands can
thank you for all your friendship, all your love. I am a seaman of
the big canoes on the salt water. There my hands are trained. But
here, on these plains and forests and high snows, it needs the
training of a lifetime up from childhood to be a hunter and warrior
as you are hunters, as you are warriors. Three snows are not enough
to train a man."
"How!" they muttered their approval--"how!"
"Hear, then, Chief Sitting Wolf. Hear, Beaver Tail, my teacher.
Hear, my friends. I speak from a full heart, and the fool tears tell
you I'm not a man yet fit to sit among men, or to ride for buffalo
out there beyond the World Spine, or to walk on the war trail, or to
keep a wife.
"You go soon, most of you, to join with the Flatheads, Nez Percés,
Pend d'Oreilles, Cœur d'Alènes, perhaps even a few Yakimas. Your
fit men will ride together in force across the World Spine to the
Great Plains, to run the buffalo bulls of the spring hunting, perhaps
to fight the Blackfeet. Your women will ride to dry the meat and
dress the robes.
"The rest of the tribe will go in your canoes along the Lake and the
West Arm, and the river of the Kutenais to the Mother of Rivers, and
downstream to the Great Falls. There they will join the fishing
tribes, under the Salmon Chief. They will catch the salmon, trade at
Fort Colville, feast, dance, gamble. They take the women to smoke
the fish. They take the children; for the babies, even the dogs, are
fit. I shall be left behind, less than the least, worse than a dog."
The chief looked sulky and aggrieved, the medicine man was clearing
his throat to make a soothing speech. One of the leaders asked Storm
to be his brother at the hunting. Another was muttering, "Shame!
shame!" All were uncomfortable. "Come to the point!" growled
Sitting Wolf.
And Storm was laughing at their disquietude. "No need," he said more
cheerfully, "for the dog to freeze."
He threw some wood on the fire, then wrapped a robe about his
shoulders.
"I am here," continued Storm, "to speak for him that was my father.
What has the little law of your petty tribe to do with a chief among
the Russians? By the law of the Russian tribe his sit-on-the-right
woman, Two Bits, gets the trading house and the lodge furnishings.
By the law of the Russians the four widows have taken equal shares of
the pony herd and harness, the canoes and paddles, the dog teams and
carrioles. He who marries one of these widows will be rich.
"Again I speak for my dead father. He was a Russian, I am an
Englishman. Russia and England are the left arm and the right arm of
mankind, enfolding the whole earth. And where the fingers meet, the
Kutenais tribe is a flea caught under a finger nail of the English.
By the law of both Russians and English I am heir to the great chief
who made me his son.
"The trade room is full of furs, and these are mine."
Sitting Wolf leaned forward staring, snarling in his throat, but
Storm went on, looking him straight in the eyes and laughing at him.
"Enough," he said incisively, "to load the canoes of the
tribe!--Silence! I speak!--and at Fort Colville, to buy guns for all
your hunters. Do you object to having your hunters armed?"
If a shell had exploded among them these Indians would have sat quite
still while Death selected his prey; and now, at the burst of Storm's
words, they kept their quietude, their dignity. Only they turned
their eyes reproachfully upon their chief. Their breathing seemed to
stop, but no face changed. In sheer relief the chief relaxed against
the backrest, and a queer smile, shy, friendly, as of a dog to his
master, sought Storm's approval.
Before they sent for Storm the members of the council had been agreed
that this white man was unfit to marry, hunt, or fight, and least of
all to hold great property. They had placed him beneath the level of
their dogs, and in return he gave them a gun to every hunter. Their
chief would not have done so.
Never again would famine camp among their lodges, and war could not
invade their mountain stronghold. The tribes allied with them for
hunting buffalo--East Kutenais, Flatheads, Nez Perces, Pend
d'Oreilles, Cœur d'Alènes, Spokanes, Yakimas combined, could never
attack with arrows a people armed with guns. Best armed of all the
tribes, they should ride safely into the barred hunting grounds of
the powerful Blackfoot Confederation. Truly this dog had fangs!
"I thought you would be pleased," said the white man easily, as he
stirred the smoldering fire until it blazed. "But there are points
you do not think of until I speak about them. This trading of furs
for guns needs a white man's brain to match against the Hudson's Bay
Company, whose trader would get the best of any Indian. I shall send
my white man, Hiram Kant, whom you call Hunt-the-girls."
The grave Indians were smiling as they heard that new name for the
trapper.
"You would have shot and wasted him, but I need him, and kept him for
this trading. I want one of you chiefs to go with Hunt-the-girls and
see that you get the guns here to this camp--or kill him. Only a
chief shall do this, because Hunt-the-girls is a chief, as all of you
know in your hearts, all of you sitting here. You shall choose who
is to go, to help him, or shoot him as the case may be.
"But of these medicine irons. They are only sticks, dead rubbish
unless you have the medicine powder, and the medicine balls. Long
ago I knew that my father was dying, and that I should prepare this
gift. For that reason I made, as you know, a carriole load and a
canoe load of bullets. I tried, you may remember, long ago, to make
the powder, but my medicine was no good. For this kind of work
Hunt-the-girls has better medicine than mine, so I let him make the
powder. He gets a trapper's outfit for his pay.
"You shall not have the powder and ball to blow away and waste. They
shall belong to Two Bits, and she will sell them to you in trade for
furs. The higher the price she charges for ball and powder, the less
will be thrown away in idle shooting. These are my orders. If you
don't like them, I'm ready to fight anybody who wants shooting, or
I'll take on the crowd--as you please.
"Now, I have one thing more to say. I will have Two Bits rich and
powerful in the tribe because she has more sense than any of you, and
she will keep Sitting Wolf out of mischief. You cannot! When the
chief is jealous he goes mad, and flies at the throat of his nearest
friend. Two Bits will tame him--already he eats out of her hand.
"That's all, I think."
For some minutes the Indians were lost in thought, or deep in prayer.
"My brother," asked the chief at last, "where is your share?"
"What share," answered Storm, "can I carry on my back? How many
horses, how many canoes, can I carry on my back through the woods?
That much is my share."
"You take nothing?"
"Before I left salt water, my friends of the big canoe gave me a gun,
a belt, a wallet, a pouch, a knife--yes, and one other thing I have
never shown you, a secret thing which is my medicine. I will ask
you, my brothers, to give me a supply of ball and powder, a robe, and
your good will."
"Where do you go?"
"When all is done and the ice breaks, I go into the Wilderness. You
have often told me about Rain, the Sacred Woman of the Blackfeet.
Men of all nations go to her lodge for counsel in their sorrow,
sickness, or peril. I go to make my offering at the holy lodge, and
seek the guidance of the Sacred Woman."