Well, we took up the dim trail on the farther side of the river and
followed it through the timber toward the cave at the foot of the cliff,
but I, for my part, was not at all anxious to reach the end of it.
Midway up the slope I called to Pitamakan to halt.
"Let's talk this over and plan just what we will do at the cave," I
proposed.
"I don't know what there is to plan," he answered, turning and facing
me. "We walk up to the cave, stoop down, and shout, 'Sticky-mouth, come
out of there!' Out he comes, terribly scared, and we stand on each side
of the entrance with raised clubs, and whack him on the base of the nose
as hard as we can. Down he falls. We hit him a few more times, and he
dies."
"Yes?" said I. "Yes?"
I was trying to remember all the bear stories that I had heard the
company men and the Indians tell, but I could call to mind no story of
their attacking a bear with clubs.
"Yes? Yes what? Why did you stop? Go on and finish what you started to
say."
"We may be running a big risk," I replied. "I have always heard that any
animal will fight when it is cornered."
"But we are not going to corner this bear. We stand on each side of the
entrance; it comes out; there is the big wide slope and the thick forest
before it, and plenty of room to run. We will be in great luck if, with
the one blow that we each will have time for, we succeed in knocking it
down. Remember this: We have to hit it and hit hard with one swing of
the club, for it will be going so fast that there will be no chance for
a second blow."
We went on. I felt somewhat reassured, and was now anxious to have the
adventure over as soon as possible. All our future depended on getting
the bear. I wondered whether, if we failed to stop the animal with our
clubs, Pitamakan would venture to defy his dream, cut off a braid of his
hair, and make a bow-cord.
Passing the last of the trees, we began to climb the short, bare slope
before the cave, when suddenly we made a discovery that was sickening.
About twenty yards from the cave the trail we were following turned
sharply to the left and went quartering back into the timber. We stared
at it for a moment in silence. Then Pitamakan said, dully:--
"Here ends our bear hunt! He was afraid to go to his den because our
scent was still there. He has gone far off to some other place that he
knows."
The outlook was certainly black. There was but one chance for us now, I
thought, and that was for me to persuade this red brother of mine to
disregard his dream and cut off some of his hair for a bow-cord. But
turning round and idly looking the other way, I saw something that
instantly drove this thought from my mind. It was a dim trail along the
foot of the cliff to the right of the cave. I grabbed Pitamakan by the
arm, yanked him round, and silently pointed at it. His quick eyes
instantly discovered it, and he grinned, and danced a couple of steps.
"Aha! That is why this one turned and went away!" he exclaimed. "Another
bear was there already, had stolen his home and bed, and he was afraid
to fight for them. Come on! Come on!"
We went but a few steps, however, before he stopped short and stood in
deep thought. Finally he turned and looked at me queerly, as if I were a
stranger and he were trying to learn by my appearance what manner of boy
I was. It is not pleasant to be stared at in that way. I stood it as
long as I could, and then asked, perhaps a little impatiently, why he
did so. The answer I got was unexpected:--
"I am thinking that the bear there in the cave may be a grizzly. How is
it? Shall we go on and take the chances, or turn back to camp? If you
are afraid, there is no use of our trying to do anything up there."
Of course I was afraid, but I was also desperate; and I felt, too, that
I must be just as brave as my partner. "Go on!" I said, and my voice
sounded strangely hollow to me. "Go on! I will be right with you."
We climbed the remainder of the slope and stood before the cave. Its low
entrance was buried in snow, all except a narrow space in the centre,
through which the bear had ploughed its way in, and which, since its
passing, had partly filled. The trail was so old that we could not
determine whether a black or a grizzly bear had made it.
But of one thing there could be no doubt: the animal was right there in
the dark hole, only a few feet from us, as was shown by the faint wisps
of congealed breath floating out of it into the cold air. Pitamakan,
silently stationing me on the right of the entrance, took his place at
the left side, and motioning me to raise my club, shouted,
"_Pahk-si-kwo-yi, sak-sit!_" (Sticky-mouth, come out!)
Nothing came; nor could we hear any movement, any stir of the leaves
inside. Again he shouted; and again and again, without result. Then,
motioning me to follow, he went down the slope. "We'll have to get a
pole and jab him," he said, when we came to the timber. "Look round for
a good one."
We soon found a slender dead pine, snapped it at the base where it had
rotted, and knocked off the few scrawny limbs. It was fully twenty feet
long, and very light.
"Now I am the stronger," said Pitamakan, as we went back, "so do you
handle the pole, and I will stand ready to hit a big blow with my club.
You keep your club in your right hand, and work the pole into the cave
with your left. In that way maybe you will have time to strike, too."
When we came to the cave, I found that his plan would not work. I could
not force the pole through the pile of snow at the entrance with one
hand, so standing the club where I could quickly reach it, I used both
hands. At every thrust the pole went in deeper, and in the excitement of
the moment I drove it harder and harder, with the result that it
unexpectedly went clear through the obstructing snow and on, and I fell
headlong.
At the instant I went down something struck the far end of the pole such
a rap that I could feel the jar of it clear back through the snow, and a
muffled, raucous, angry yowl set all my strained nerves a-quiver. As I
was gathering myself to rise, the dreadful yowl was repeated right over
my head, and down the bear came on me, clawing and squirming. Its sharp
nails cut right into my legs. I squirmed as best I could under its
weight, and no doubt went through the motions of yelling; but my face
was buried in the snow, and for the moment I could make no sound.
Although I was sure that a grizzly was upon me and that my time had
come, I continued to wiggle, and to my great surprise, I suddenly
slipped free from the weight, rose up, and toppled over backward,
catching, as I went, just a glimpse of Pitamakan fiercely striking a
blow with his club. I was on my feet in no time, and what I saw caused
me to yell with delight as I sprang for my club. The bear was kicking
and writhing in the snow, and my partner was showering blows on its
head. I delivered a blow or two myself before it ceased to struggle.
Then I saw that it was not a grizzly, but a black bear of no great size.
Had it been a grizzly, I certainly, and probably Pitamakan, too, would
have been killed right there.
It was some little time before we could settle down to the work in hand.
Pitamakan had to describe how he had stood ready, and hit the bear a
terrific blow on the nose as it came leaping out, and how he had
followed it up with more blows as fast as he could swing his club. Then
I tried to tell how I had felt, crushed under the bear and expecting
every instant to be bitten and clawed to death. But words failed me,
and, moreover, a stinging sensation in my legs demanded my attention;
there were several gashes in them from which blood was trickling, and my
trousers were badly ripped. I rubbed the wounds a bit with snow, and
found that they were not so serious as they looked.
[Illustration: PITAMAKAN FIERCELY STRIKING A BLOW]
The bear, a male, was very fat, and was quite too heavy for us to carry;
probably it weighed two hundred pounds. But we could drag it, and taking
hold of its fore paws, we started home. It was easy to pull it down the
slope and across the ice, but from there to camp, across the level
valley, dragging it was very hard work. Night had fallen when we
arrived, and cold as the air was, we were covered with perspiration.
Luckily, we had a good supply of wood on hand. Pitamakan, opening the
ash-heap, raked out a mass of live coals and started a good fire. Then
we rested and broiled some rabbit meat before attacking the bear. Never
were there two happier boys than we, as we sat before our fire in that
great wilderness, munched our insipid rabbit meat and gloated over our
prize.
The prehistoric people no doubt considered obsidian knives most
excellent tools; but to us, who were accustomed only to sharp steel,
they seemed anything but excellent; they severely tried our muscles, our
patience, and our temper. They proved, however, to be not such bad
flaying instruments. Still, we were a long time ripping the bear's skin
from the tip of the jaw down along the belly to the tail, and from the
tail down the inside of the legs to and round the base of the feet.
There were fully two inches of fat on the carcass, and when we finally
got the hide off, we looked as if we had actually wallowed in it. By
that time, according to the Big Dipper, it was past midnight, but
Pitamakan would not rest until he had the back sinews safe out of the
carcass and drying before the fire for early use.
It is commonly believed that the Indians used the leg tendons of animals
for bow-cords, thread, and wrappings, but this is a mistake; the only
ones they took were the back sinews. These lie like ribbons on the
outside of the flesh along the backbone, and vary in length and
thickness according to the size of the animal. Those of a buffalo bull,
for instance, are nearly three feet long, three or four inches wide, and
a quarter of an inch thick. When dry, they are easily shredded into
thread of any desired size.
Those that we now took from the bear were not two feet long, but were
more than sufficient for a couple of bow-cords. As soon as we had them
free, we pressed them against a smooth length of dry wood, where they
stuck; and laying this well back from the fire, we began our
intermittent night's sleep, for, as I have said, we had to get up
frequently to replenish the fire.
The next morning, expecting to have a fine feast, I broiled some of the
bear meat over the coals, but it was so rank that one mouthful was more
than enough; so I helped Pitamakan finish the last of the rabbit meat.
He would have starved rather than eat the meat of a bear, for to the
Blackfeet the bear is "medicine," a sacred animal, near kin to man, and
therefore not to be used for food.
Killing a grizzly was considered as great a feat as killing a Sioux, or
other enemy. But the successful hunter took no part of the animal except
the claws, unless he were a medicine-man. The medicine-man, with many
prayers and sacrifices to the gods, would occasionally take a strip of
the fur to wrap round the roll containing his sacred pipe.
Pitamakan himself was somewhat averse to our making any use of the black
bear's hide, but when I offered to do all the work of scraping off the
fat meat and of drying it, he consented to sleep on it once with me, as
an experiment, and if his dreams were good, to continue to use it.
I went at my task with good will, and was half the morning getting the
hide clean and in shape to stretch and dry. Pitamakan meanwhile made two
bow-cords of the bear sinew. First he raveled them into a mass of fine
threads, and then hand-spun them into a twisted cord of the desired
length; and he made a very good job of it, too. When he had stretched
the cords to dry before the fire, he sharpened a twig of dry birch for
an awl, and with the rest of the sinew, repaired our badly ripped
moccasins. At noon we started out to hunt, and on the way dragged the
bear carcass back to the river and across it into the big timber, where
later on we hoped to use it for bait.
This day we went up the river, walking noiselessly on the ice. From the
start we felt confident of success; for not only were our bow-cords as
good as we could desire, but the bows were now in fine condition,
having dried out and become more stiff, yet springy. Since, during the
latter part of the night, more snow had fallen, we could distinguish
fresh game tracks from old ones. And now that there was snow on the ice,
we naturally expected to see where the hoofed game had been crossing the
river; they seldom venture out on smooth ice, from fear of slipping and
injuring themselves.
The first game we saw were a number of ruffed grouse standing in a row
at the edge of a strip of open water, to take their daily drink. They
walked away into the willows at our approach, and from there flew into
the firs, where we knocked down four of them with our blunt-headed bird
arrows. I got only one, for of course I was not so good a marksman with
bow and arrow as my partner, who had used the weapon more or less since
he was old enough to walk.
Burying the grouse in the snow at the edge of the shore, we went on, and
presently came to the place where several elk had crossed to the north
side of the river, browsed among a bordering patch of red willows, and
then gone into the thick firs. We followed them, not nearly so excited
now that we had trustworthy weapons as we had been on the previous hunt.
When we came near the firs, which covered several acres of the bend in
the river, Pitamakan sent me round to enter the farther side and come
through the patch toward him, while he took his stand close to the place
where the band had entered.
"You needn't come back carefully," he said to me. "Make all the noise
you can--the more the better; then they will come running out here on
their back trail, and I'll get some good shots. You'd better give me one
of your real arrows, for you will probably not get a chance even for one
shot at them."
That left me with only one arrow with an obsidian point, but
nevertheless I determined to do my best to get an elk. As Pitamakan had
remarked about himself, I, too, felt the sun power strong within me that
morning and looked for success. With that feeling, call it what you
will,--all old hunters will understand what I mean,--I was not at all
surprised, a short time after entering the firs, to see, as I was
sneaking along through them, a big bull elk astride a willow bush that
he had borne down in order to nip the tender tips.
He was not fifty feet from me, and no doubt thought that the slight
noise which he heard was made by one of his band. He could not see me at
first, because of a screen of fir branches between us, and he had not
looked up when I made the final step that brought me into the open. But
when I raised the bow, he jerked his head sidewise and gathered himself
for a jump.
He was not so quick as I. The strength of a giant seemed to swell in my
arms; I drew the arrow sliding back across the bow almost to the head
with a lightning-like pull, and let it go, _zip!_ deep into his side
through the small ribs.
Away he went, and I after him, yelling at the top of my voice to scare
the herd toward Pitamakan, if possible. I saw several of them bounding
away through the firs, but my eyes were all for the red trail of the
bull. And presently I came to the great animal, stretched across a
snow-covered log and breathing its last; for the arrow had pierced its
lungs.
"_Wo-ke-haí! Ni-kaí-nit-ab is-stum-ik!_" (Come on! I have killed a
bull!) I yelled.
And from the far side of the firs came the answer: "_Nis-toab
ni-mut-uk-stan!_" (I have also killed!)
That was great news. Although it was hard for me to leave my big bull
even for a moment, I went to Pitamakan, and found that he had killed a
fine big cow. He had used three arrows, and had finally dropped her at
the edge of the river.
We were so much pleased and excited over our success that it was some
time before we could cease telling how it all happened and settle down
to work. We had several fresh obsidian flakes, but as the edges soon
grew dull, we were all the rest of the day in getting the hides off the
animals and going to camp with the meat of the cow. The meat of my bull
was too poor to use, but his skin, sinews, brains, and liver were of the
greatest value to us, as will be explained.
"There is so much for us to do that it is hard to decide what to do
first," said Pitamakan that night.
It was long after dark, and we had just gathered the last of a pile of
firewood and sat ourselves down before the cheerful blaze.
"The first thing is to cook a couple of grouse, some elk liver, and hang
a side of elk ribs over the fire to roast for later eating," I said, and
began preparing the great feast.
After our long diet of rabbits, it was a feast. We finished the birds
and the liver, and then sat waiting patiently for the fat ribs to roast
to a crisp brown as they swung on a tripod over the fire. I was now so
accustomed to eating meat without salt that I no longer craved the
mineral, and of course my companion never thought of it. In those days
the Blackfeet used none; their very name for it, _is-tsik-si-pok-wi_
(like fire tastes), proved their dislike of the condiment.
"Well, let us now decide what we shall do first," Pitamakan again
proposed. "We need new moccasins, new leggings and snowshoes. Moreover,
we need a comfortable lodge. Which shall be first?"
"The lodge," I answered, without hesitation. "But how can we make one?
What material can we get for one unless we kill twenty elk and tan the
skins? That would take a long time."
"This is a different kind of lodge," he explained. "When you came up the
Big River you saw the lodges of the Earth People? Yes. Well, we will
build one like theirs."
On the voyage up the Missouri with my uncle I had not only seen the
lodges of the Earth People (Sak-wi Tup-pi), as the Blackfeet called the
Mandans, but I had been inside several of them, and noted how warm and
comfortable they were. Their construction was merely a matter of posts,
poles, and earth. We agreed to begin one in the morning, and do no
hunting until it was done.
The site that we chose for the lodge was a mile below camp and close to
the river, where two or three years before a fire, sweeping through a
growth of "lodge-pole" pines, had killed thousands of the young, slender
trees. In a grove of heavy firs close by we began the work, and as every
one should know how to build a comfortable house without the aid of
tools and nails, I will give some details of the construction.
In place of the four heavy corner posts which the Mandans cut, we used
four low-crotched trees that stood about twenty feet apart in the form
of a square. In the crotches on two sides of the square we laid as heavy
a pole as we could carry, and bolstered up the centre with a pile of
flat rocks, to keep it from sagging. On the joists, as these may be
called, we laid lighter poles side by side, to form the roof. In the
centre we left a space about four feet wide, the ends of which we
covered with shorter poles, until we reduced it to a hole four feet
square.
The next task was to get the poles for the sides. These we made of the
proper length by first denting them with sharp-edged stones and then
snapping them off. They were slanted all round against the four sides,
except for a narrow space in the south side, which we left for a
doorway. Next we thatched the roof and sides with a thick layer of
balsam boughs, on top of which we laid a covering of earth nearly a foot
deep. This earth we shoveled into an elk hide with elk shoulder blades,
and then carried each load to its proper place. Lastly, we constructed
in the same manner a passageway six or eight feet long to the door.
All this took us several days to accomplish, and was hard work. But when
we had laid a ring of heavy stones directly under the square opening in
the roof for a fireplace, made a thick bed of balsam boughs, and covered
it with the bearskin, put up an elkskin for a door, and sat us down
before a cheerful fire, we had a snug, warm house, and were vastly proud
of it.
"Now for some adventure," said Pitamakan, as we sat eating our first
meal in the new house. "What say you we had best do?"
"Make some moccasins and snowshoes," I replied.
"We can do that at night. Let us----"
The sentence was never finished. A terrible booming roar, seemingly
right overhead, broke upon our ears. Pitamakan's brown face turned an
ashy gray as he sprang up, crying:
"Run! Run! Run!"