"If they will not do," Pitamakan muttered, rising stiffly, while the ice
on his leggings crackled, "why, I'll cut off a braid of my hair."
I was now sure that our troubles had weakened his mind; no Indian in his
right senses would think of cutting off his hair.
"Pitamakan! What is the trouble with you?" I asked, looking up anxiously
at him.
"Why, nothing is the matter," he replied. "Nothing is the matter. We
must now try to work the drill with a bow. If our moccasin strings are
too rotten to bear the strain, I'll have to make a bow cord by cutting
off some of my hair and braiding it."
It was a great relief to know that he was sane enough, but I had little
faith in this new plan, and followed listlessly as he went here and
there, testing the branches of willow and birch. Finally, he got from
the river shore one stone that was large and smooth, and another that
had a sharp edge. Then, scraping the snow away from the base of a birch
shoot a couple of inches in diameter, he laid the smooth stone at its
base. Next he bade me bend the shoot close down on the smooth stone,
while with the sharp edge of the other he hit the strained wood fibre a
few blows. In this way he easily severed the stem. Cutting off the top
of the sapling in the same manner, he had a bow about three feet in
length; a rough, clumsy piece of wood, it is true, but resilient.
As my moccasin strings were buckskin and much stronger than Pitamakan's
cow-leather ones, we used one of mine for the bowstring. We now carried
the base stick and drill back from the creek into the thick timber,
gathered a large bunch of birch bark and a pile of fine and coarse
twigs, and made ready for this last attempt to save ourselves.
We hesitated to begin; uncertainty as to the result was better than
sure knowledge of failure, but while we waited we began to freeze. It
was a solemn and anxious moment when Pitamakan set the point of the
drill in the hole, made one turn of the bowstring round its centre, and
held it in place by pressing down with the palm of his left hand on the
tip. With his right hand he grasped the bow, and waiting until I had the
shredded bark in place round the hole, he once more started the coyote
prayer song and began sawing the bow forth and back, precisely the
motion of a cross-cut saw biting into a standing tree.
The wrap of the string caused the drill to twirl with amazing rapidity,
and at the third or fourth saw he gave a howl of pain and dropped the
outfit. I had no need to ask why. The drill tip had burned his hand;
when he held it out a blister was already puffing up.
We changed places, and I gathered the skirt of my capote in a bunch to
protect my hand. I began to work the bow, faster and faster, until the
drill moaned intermittently, like a miniature buzz-saw. In a moment or
two I thought that I saw a very faint streak of smoke stealing up
between my companion's fingers.
He was singing again, and did not hear my exclamation as I made sure
that my eyes had not deceived me. Smoke actually was rising. I sawed
harder and harder; more and more smoke arose, but there was no flame.
"Why not?" I cried. "Oh, why don't you burn?"
Pitamakan's eyes were glaring anxiously, greedily at the blue curling
vapor. I continued to saw with all possible rapidity, but still there
was no flame; instead, the smoke began to diminish in volume. A chill
ran through me as I saw it fail.
I was on the point of giving up, of dropping the bow and saying that
this was the end of our trail, when the cause of the failure was made
plain to me. Pitamakan was pressing the shredded bark too tight round
the drill and into the hole; there could be no fire where there was no
air. "Raise your fingers!" I shouted. "Loosen up the bark!"
I had to repeat what I said before he understood and did as he was told.
Instantly the bark burst into flame.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!" I cried, as I hastily snatched out the drill.
"_I-puh-kwí-is! I-puh-kwí-is!_" (It burns! It burns!) Pitamakan shouted.
He held a big wad of bark to the tiny flame, and when it ignited,
carried the blazing, sputtering mass to the pile of fuel that we had
gathered and thrust it under the fine twigs. These began to crackle and
snap, and we soon had a roaring fire. Pitamakan raised his hands to the
sky and reverently gave thanks to his gods; I silently thanked my own
for the mercy extended to us. From death, at least by freezing, we were
saved!
The sun was setting. In the gathering dusk we collected a huge pile of
dead wood, every piece in the vicinity that we had strength to lift and
carry, some of them fallen saplings twenty and thirty feet long. I was
for putting a pile of them on the fire and having a big blaze. I did
throw on three or four large chunks, but Pitamakan promptly lifted them
off.
"That is the way of white people!" he said. "They waste wood and stand,
half freezing, away back from the big blaze. Now we will have this in
the way we Lone People do it, and so will we get dry and warm."
While I broke off boughs of feathery balsam fir and brought in huge
armfuls of them, he set up the frame of a small shelter close to the
fire. First, he placed a triangle of heavy sticks, so that the stubs of
branches at their tops interlocked, and then he laid up numerous sticks
side by side, and all slanting together at the top, so as to fill two
sides of the triangle. These we shingled with the fir boughs, layer
after layer, to a thickness of several feet. With the boughs, also, we
made a soft bed within.
We now had a fairly comfortable shelter. In shape it was roughly like
the half of a hollow cone, and the open part faced the fire. Creeping
into it, we sat on the bed, close to the little blaze. Some cold air
filtered through the bough thatching and chilled our backs. Pitamakan
pulled off his capote and told me to do the same. Spreading them out, he
fastened them to the sticks of the slanting roof and shut off the draft.
The heat radiating from the fire struck them, and reflecting, warmed our
backs. The ice dropped from our clothes and they began to steam; we were
actually comfortable.
But now that the anxieties and excitement of the day were over, and I
had time to think about other things than fire, back came my hunger with
greater insistence than ever. I could not believe it possible for us to
go without eating as long as Pitamakan said his people were able to
fast. Worse still, I saw no possible way for us to get food. When I
said as much to Pitamakan, he laughed.
"Take courage; don't be an afraid person," he said. "Say to yourself, 'I
am not hungry,' and keep saying it, and soon it will be the truth to
you. But we will not fast very long. Why, if it were necessary, I would
get meat for us this very night."
I stared at him. The expression of his eyes was sane enough. I fancied
that there was even a twinkle of amusement in them. If he was making a
joke, although a sorry one, I could stand it; but if he really meant
what he said, then there could be no doubt but that his mind wandered.
"Lie down and sleep," I said. "You have worked harder than I, and sleep
will do you good. I will keep the fire going."
At that he laughed, a clear, low laugh of amusement that was good to
hear. "Oh, I meant what I said. I am not crazy. Now think hard. Is there
any possible way for us to get food this night?"
"Of course there isn't," I replied, after a moment's reflection. "Don't
joke about the bad fix we are in; that may make it all the worse for
us."
He looked at me pityingly. "Ah, you are no different from the rest of
the whites. True, they are far wiser than we Lone People. But take away
from them the things their powerful medicine has taught them how to
make, guns and powder and ball, fire steels and sticks, knives and
clothes and blankets of hair, take from them these things and they
perish. Yes, they die where we should live, and live comfortably."
I felt that there was much truth in what he said. I doubted if any of
the company's men, even the most experienced of them, would have been
able to make a fire had they been stripped of everything that they
possessed. But his other statement, that if necessary he could get food
for us at once.
"Where could you find something for us to eat now?" I asked.
"Out there anywhere," he replied, with a wave of the hand. "Haven't you
noticed the trails of the rabbits, hard-packed little paths in the snow,
where they travel round through the brush? Yes, of course you have.
Well, after the middle of the night, when the moon rises and gives some
light, I could go out there and set some snares in those paths, using
our moccasin strings for loops, and in a short time we would have a
rabbit; maybe two or three of them."
How easy a thing seems, once you know how to do it! I realized instantly
that the plan was perfectly feasible, and wondered at my own dullness in
not having thought of it. I had been sitting up stiffly enough before
the fire, anxiety over our situation keeping my nerves all a-quiver. Now
a pleasant sense of security came to me. I felt only tired and sleepy,
and dropped back on the boughs.
"Pitamakan, you are very wise," I said, and in a moment was sound
asleep. If he answered I never heard him.
Every time the fire died down the cold awoke one or both of us to put on
fresh fuel; and then we slept again, and under the circumstances, passed
a very restful night.
Soon after daylight snow began to fall again, not so heavily as in the
previous storm, but with a steadiness that promised a long period of bad
weather. We did not mind going out into it, now that we could come back
to a fire at any time and dry ourselves.
Before setting forth, however, we spent some time in making two rude
willow arrows. We mashed off the proper lengths with our "anvil" and
cutting-stone, smoothed the ends by burning them, and then scraped the
shafts and notched them with our obsidian knives. I proposed that we
sharpen the points, but Pitamakan said no; that blunt ones were better
for bird shooting, because they smashed the wing bones. Pitamakan had
worked somewhat on the bow during the evening, scraping it thinner and
drying it before the fire, so that now it had more spring; enough to
get us meat, he thought. The great difficulty would be to shoot the
unfeathered, clumsy arrows true to the mark.
Burying some coals deep in the ashes to make sure that they would be
alive upon our return, we started out. Close to camp, Pitamakan set two
rabbit snares, using a part of our moccasin strings for the purpose. His
manner of doing this was simple. He bent a small, springy sapling over
the rabbit path, and stuck the tip of it under a low branch of another
tree. Next he tied the buckskin string to the sapling, so that the noose
end of it hung cross-wise in the rabbit path, a couple of inches above
the surface of it. Then he stuck several feathery balsam tips on each
side of the path, to hide the sides of the noose and prevent its being
blown out of place by the wind. When a passing rabbit felt the loop
tighten on its neck, its struggles would release the tip of the
spring-pole from under the bough, and it would be jerked up in the air
and strangled.
From camp, we went down the valley, looking for grouse in all the
thickest clumps of young pines. Several rabbits jumped up ahead of us,
snow-white, big-footed and black-eyed. Pitamakan let fly an arrow at one
of them, but it fell short of the mark.
There were game trails everywhere. The falling snow was fast filling
them, so that we could not distinguish new tracks from old; but after
traveling a half-mile or so, we began to see the animals themselves, elk
and deer, singly, and in little bands. As we approached a tangle of red
willows, a bull, a cow, and a calf moose rose from the beds they had
made in them. The cow and calf trotted away, but the bull, his hair all
bristling forward, walked a few steps toward us, shaking his big,
broad-horned head. The old trappers' tales of their ferocity at this
time of year came to my mind, and I began to look for a tree to climb;
there was none near by. All had such a large circumference that I could
not reach halfway round them.
"Let's run!" I whispered.
"Stand still!" Pitamakan answered. "If you run, he will come after us."
The bull was not more than fifty yards from us. In the dim light of the
forest his eyes, wicked little pig-like eyes, glowed with a greenish
fire. The very shape of him was terrifying, more like a creature of bad
dreams than an actual inhabitant of the earth. His long head had a
thick, drooping upper lip; a tassel of black hair swung from his lower
jaw; at the withers he stood all of six feet high, and sloped back to
insignificant hind quarters; his long hair was rusty gray, shading into
black. All this I took in at a glance. The bull again shook his head at
us and advanced another step or two. "If he starts again, run for a
tree," Pitamakan said.
That was a trying moment. We were certainly much afraid of him, and so
would the best of the company men have been had they stood there
weaponless in knee-deep snow. Once more he tossed his enormous horns;
but just as he started to advance, a stick snapped in the direction in
which the cow and calf had gone. At that he half turned and looked back,
then trotted away in their trail. The instant he disappeared we started
the other way, and never stopped until we came to our shelter.
It was well for us that we did return just then. The falling snow was
wetting the ash-heap, and the water would soon have soaked through to
the buried coals. We dug them up and started another fire, and sat
before it for some time before venturing out again. This experience
taught us, when leaving camp thereafter, to cover the coal-heap with a
roof of wood or bark.
"Well, come on! Let's go up the valley this time, and see what will
happen to us there," said Pitamakan, when we had rested.
Not three hundred yards above camp we came to a fresh bear trail, so
fresh that only a very thin coating of snow had fallen since the passing
of the animal. It led us to the river, when we saw that it continued on
the other side up to the timber, straight toward the cave that had
sheltered us. The tracks, plainly outlined in the sand at the edge of
the water, were those of a black bear. "That is he, the one that
gathered the leaves and stuff we slept in, and he's going there now!"
Pitamakan exclaimed.
"If we only had his carcass, how much more comfortable we could be!" I
said. "The hide would be warm and soft to lie on, and the fat meat would
last us a long time."
"If he goes into the cave to stay, we'll get him," said Pitamakan. "If
we can't make bows and arrows to kill him, we will take strong, heavy
clubs and pound him on the head."
We went up the valley. Trailing along behind my companion, I thought
over his proposal to club the bear to death. A month, even a few days
back, such a plan would have seemed foolish; but I was fast learning
that necessity, starvation, will cause a man to take chances against
the greatest odds. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt like
facing that bear.
I was about to propose that we go after it at once, when, with a whirr
of wings that startled us, a large covey of blue grouse burst from a
thicket close by, and alighted here and there in the pines and firs. We
moved on a few steps, and stopped within short bow-shot of one. It did
not seem to be alarmed at our approach, and Pitamakan took his time to
fit one of the clumsy arrows and fire it.
_Zip!_ The shaft passed a foot from its body, struck a limb above and
dropped down into the snow. But the grouse never moved. Anxiously I
watched the fitting and aiming of the other arrow.
_Zip!_ I could not help letting out a loud yell when it hit fair and the
bird came fluttering and tumbling down. I ran forward and fell on it the
instant it struck the snow, and grasped its plump body with tense
hands. "Meat! See! We have meat!" I cried, holding up the fine cock.
"Be still! You have already scared all the other birds out of this
tree!" said Pitamakan.
It was true. There had been three more in that fir, and now, because of
my shouts, they were gone. Pitamakan looked at me reproachfully as he
started to pick up the fallen arrows. Right there I learned a lesson in
self-restraint that I never forgot.
We knew that there were more grouse in near-by trees, but they sat so
still and were so much the color of their surroundings that we were some
time in discovering any of them. They generally chose a big limb to
light on, close to the bole of the tree. Finally our hungry eyes spied
three in the next tree, and Pitamakan began shooting at the lower one,
while I recovered the arrows for him.
Luck was against us. It was nothing, but miss, miss, miss, and as one by
one the arrows grazed the birds, they hurtled away through the forest
and out of sight. We were more fortunate a little farther on, for we got
two birds from a small fir. Then we hurried to camp with our prizes.
I was for roasting the three of them at once, and eating a big feast;
but Pitamakan declared that he would not have any such doings. "We'll
eat one now," he said, "one in the evening, and the other in the
morning."
We were so hungry that we could not wait to cook the first bird
thoroughly. Dividing it, we half roasted the portions over the coals,
and ate the partly raw flesh. Although far from enough, that was the
best meal I ever had. And it was not so small, either; the blue grouse
is a large and heavy bird, next to the sage-hen the largest of our
grouse. After eating, we went out and "rustled" a good pile of fuel. As
night came on, we sat down before the blaze in a cheerful mood, and
straightway began to make plans for the future, which now seemed less
dark than at the beginning of the day.
"With a better bow and better arrows, it is certain that we can kill
enough grouse to keep us alive," I said.
"Not unless we have snowshoes to travel on," Pitamakan objected. "In a
few days the snow will be so deep that we can no longer wade in it."
"We can make them of wood," I suggested, remembering the tale of a
company man.
"But we couldn't travel about barefooted. Our moccasins will last only a
day or two longer. One of mine, you see, is already ripping along the
sole. Brother, if we are ever to see green grass and our people again,
these things must we have besides food--thread and needles, skins for
moccasins, clothing and bedding, and a warm lodge. The weather is going
to be terribly cold before long."
At that my heart went away down. I had thought only of food, forgetting
that other things were just as necessary. The list of them staggered
me--thread and needles, moccasins, and all the rest! "Well, then, we
must die," I exclaimed, "for we can never get all those things!"
"We can and we will," said Pitamakan, cheerfully, "and the beginning of
it all will be a better bow and some real arrows, arrows with ice-rock
or flint points. We will try to make some to-morrow. Hah! Listen!"
I barely heard the plaintive squall, but he recognized it. "Come on,
it's a rabbit in one of the snares!" he cried, and out we ran into the
brush.
He was right. A rabbit, still kicking and struggling for breath, was
hanging in the farther snare. Resetting the trap, we ran, happy and
laughing, back to the fire with the prize.
After all, we ate two grouse, instead of one, that evening, burying them
under the fire, and this time letting them roast long enough so that the
meat parted easily from the bones.