Crossing the valley from south to north in front of us, the snowshoe
trail disappeared, a hundred yards away, in a clump of pines. The
Indian, brushing against a branch, had relieved it of its weight of
snow, and its dark green foliage stood out in sharp contrast with the
prevailing white. There was a chance that he might still be in that
thicket.
"We must know if he is there," said Pitamakan. "Though he didn't hear us
we must still know whence this enemy came, and why, and where he is
going."
We began by going cautiously round the pines. From a distance, we could
see the trail coming out of them on the farther side and going on
straight to the river, where the water fell in cascades over a wide
series of low, broken reefs. From there the trail followed the edge of
the open water down past the last of the falls, and then showed plain
on the frozen river as far as we could see.
Venturing now to follow it to the cascades, we learned at a glance, on
arriving there, why the lone traveler had come into our peaceful valley.
At the edge of the water the snow was all trampled down, and the prints
of bare feet in it showed that the man had been wading in the river.
Scattered on the packed snow were several fragments of dark green rock,
one of which Pitamakan picked up and examined.
"This is what he came after," he said. "It is pipestone and very soft.
Both the Kootenays and the Flatheads make their pipes of it because it
is so easily worked into shape."
"Where do you think he came from?" I asked.
"From the camp of his people. These mountain Indians winter down along
their big lake. Very little snow falls there, and horse-feed is always
good."
"Well, if he came from down there, why do we find his trail to this
place coming straight across the valley from the south?"
"Ah, that is so!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "Come on! We must find out about
that."
We took the man's back trail, and, passing our deadfall, paused to note
how plainly it could be seen from several points along the way. It was a
wonder that he had noticed neither the deadfall nor our hard-packed,
snowshoe trail.
"The gods were certainly good to us!" my partner exclaimed. "They caused
him to look the other way as he passed."
The back trail led us straight to the foot of the steep mountain rising
from the valley. There, in several places, the snow was scraped away to
the ground, where evidently the man had searched for the pipestone ledge
that was probably exposed somewhere near. Failing to find it, he had
been obliged to go to the river and wade to the place where it again
cropped out. His trail to the side hill came straight up the valley.
We certainly had something to think and talk about now--and also to
worry about. Others of the enemy might come after pipestone, and there
was our trail running straight to the place. Going back to the deadfall,
we took out the fisher, but did not reset the trap; for we determined
not to go thereafter within several miles of the pipestone falls.
Another heavy snowfall would pretty much obliterate our trail, and we
prayed that it would soon come. From that day, indeed, our sense of
peace and security was gone.
Sitting within the lodge, we always had the feeling that the enemy might
be close by, waiting to shoot us when we stepped outside. On the daily
rounds of our traps we were ever watching places where a foe might be
lying in wait. Pitamakan said that the only thing for us to do was to
make strong medicine. Accordingly, he gave our bearskin to the sun; he
lashed it firmly in the fork of a tree, and made a strong prayer to the
shining god to guard us from being ambushed by the enemy.
Although we had long since lost track of the days of the week, we agreed
in thinking that the discovery of the man's trail took place in "the
moon before the moon when the web-feet come"; or, as the white man would
say, in February. At the end of the next moon, then,--in March,--spring
would come on the plains. Up where we were, however, the snow would last
much longer--probably until May. Pitamakan said that we must leave the
valley long before then, because with the first signs of spring the deer
would be working back into the high mountains, and the Kootenays would
follow them.
"How can we do that when, as you say, the pass cannot be crossed until
summer?" I asked.
"There is another pass to the south of us," he replied, "the Two
Medicine pass. There is no dangerous place anywhere along it."
"Then we can easily get out of here!" I exclaimed. "Let us start soon."
He shook his head. "No," he said. "We can't go until the snow melts from
the low country where the Kootenays and Flatheads winter. We have to go
down there to make our start on the Two Medicine trail."
"Why so?" said I, in surprise. "Why can't we go straight south from here
until we strike it?"
He laughed grimly.
"Between us and the trail lie many cañons and many mountains that none
but the birds can cross. Besides, along each stream is a trail used by
these Indians in their hunts up toward the backbone of the range, which
is like the trail that crosses over to the Two Medicine. I could not
recognize the right one when we came to it, and we should follow up one
after another, and wear ourselves out. I remember some landmarks only
where the right trail leaves the lake and enters the heavy timber, and
from that place we have to start. Also, we have to start from there on
bare ground; for if we started on the snow, our trail would be seen and
followed, and that would be the end for us."
"Well, then, let's go up and look at the summit of our pass," I
proposed. "It may not be so bad as you think. Perhaps we can find some
way to cross the dangerous place."
He objected that we should waste our time, but I kept urging that we
must overlook no possible chance to escape to the plains, until finally
I persuaded him. One bright morning we put on our snowshoes and started.
As the going was good on the deep, settled snow, we were not long in
covering the distance to the Salt Springs. Up and down the mountainside,
all round them, was a perfect network of goat trails in the snow, and
here and there were large and small groups of the strange, uncouth
animals, some lying down, some sitting and staring dejectedly off into
space, while still others were cropping lichens from wind-swept, rocky
walls. Although several of them were less than three hundred yards
away, they paid no attention to us.
After watching some that were feeding on the cliff wall, where they
looked as if they were pasted to it, we came to the conclusion that they
could travel where a bighorn would certainly fall and be dashed to
pieces. One old billy-goat was almost human in the way in which he got
over difficult places. After standing on his hind legs and gathering all
the lichen within reach he concluded to ascend to the next shelf. Since
there was not room for him to back away for a leap, he placed his
forefeet over the edge, and drew himself up on to it--exactly as a man
draws himself up by the sheer muscular strength of his arms.
Not far beyond the springs, we left the last of the timber and began the
ascent of the summit proper, and soon came into the zone of terrific
winds; but fortunately for us, there was scarce a breath stirring that
day. The snow was so hard-packed by the wind that when we removed our
snowshoes, our moccasined feet left no impressions in it. The rocky
slopes facing the northwest were absolutely bare, while those pitching
the other way lay buried under drifts from five to fifty feet and more
in depth.
Late in the afternoon we came to the west end of the pass, having made
twice as good time in the ascent as we had in the descent in the autumn
with horses. I needed but one glance at the place to be convinced that
it was impassable. The steep slide where my horse and I had so nearly
been lost was buried deep in snow; towering above it were heavy,
greenish, concave drifts of snow clinging to the knife-edge wall and
likely to topple over at any moment. Our weight might, and probably
would, start an avalanche rushing down the slide and off into abysmal
space. We stood in the trail of several goats, which had ventured out on
the slide for a few yards, abruptly turned and retraced their steps.
"Even they feared to cross," said Pitamakan. "Come on! Let's go home."
I was so disappointed that I had not a word to say on the way down. We
reached the lodge late in the night, made sure that no one had been near
it during our absence, and after building a good fire and eating some
roast meat, crawled into our fur bag, nearly worn out. It had been a
long, hard day.
At this time our catch of fur began to decrease rapidly. It is my belief
that the predatory as well as the herbivorous animals never stray very
far from the place where they are born.
A case in point is that of an old grizzly bear, whose trail could not be
mistaken because he had lost a toe from his left front foot. Every three
weeks he crossed the outlet of the Upper St. Mary's Lake, wandered up
into the Red Eagle Valley, swung round northward along the back-bone of
the Rockies to the Swift Current Waters, and thence down across the
outlet again. Observation of other animals also leads me to believe
that they all have their habitual rounds. If this is so, it explains why
it was that our deadfalls held fewer and fewer prizes for us, until
finally three or four days would pass without our finding even a marten
to reward us for our long, weary tramps.
The days now grew noticeably longer and warmer, until finally
snow-shoeing was impossible after nine or ten o'clock in the morning.
The warm sun turned the snow into large, loose, water-saturated grains
which would give way every few steps and let us down clear to the
ground, often in places where the snow was so deep that we stood, so to
speak, in a greenish well from which we had to look straight up to see
the sky. It was very difficult to get out of such places.
Toward the end of our stay we did most of our tramping in the early
morning, when the snow was covered with so hard a crust by the night's
frost that it would hold us up without snowshoes.
One evening we heard the distant cry of wild geese. That was our signal
for departure. We made a last round of the deadfalls, sprung each one
that was set, and the next day made up two bundles of the peltries that
we were to take with us. There were in all sixty-one marten, ten fisher,
seventeen mink, five wolverene, one mountain-lion, eight lynx, and two
otter skins. Fortunately, there was little weight in all that number,
and we bound them so compactly that there was little bulk. A quantity of
moose meat, cut into thin sheets and dried, made up the rest of our
pack. Nor did we forget the fire-drill and a small, hard piece of birch
wood that had been seasoning by the fire all the winter for a drill
base.
The goatskin sleeping-bag was too heavy to take along; it would have
added much to our comfort, of course, but there was now no night cold
enough to be very disagreeable so long as we could have fire, and of
that we were assured. However, Pitamakan did not intend that the bag
should be wasted; almost the last thing that he did was to make an
offering of it to the sun. Lashing the bundle in a tree, he prayed that
we might survive all perils by the way, and soon reach the lodges of our
people.
At sundown we ate our last meal in the lodge and enjoyed for the last
time its cheerful shelter. Somehow, as we sat by the fire, we did not
feel like talking. To go away and leave the little home to the elements
and the prowlers of the night was like parting forever from some near
and dear friend.
We waited several hours, until the frost hardened the snow; then putting
on the snowshoes and slinging the packs, we started away down the
valley. There was certainly a lump in my throat as I turned for a last
look at the lodge, with the smoke of its fire curling up from it and
beckoning us back to rest and sleep.
Until midnight the stiffening crust occasionally broke and let us down;
but after that time it became so hard that, taking off our snowshoes
and slinging them to the packs, we made remarkable time down the valley.
After passing the pipestone falls, we entered country new to us, where
the valley became much wider. Every mile or two a branch came into the
river, which we were obliged to ford, for the ice had gone out of the
streams. It was no fun to remove moccasins and leggings, wade through
the icy water, and then put them on in the snow on the other side.
For several weeks avalanches had been thundering down the mountain-sides
all round us, and this night they seemed more frequent than ever. Once
one tore its way to the valley just behind us. Not an hour later,
Pitamakan's pack-thong broke, and let his bundle down into the snow. As
we stopped to retie it, there came the rumbling of an avalanche,
apparently right over our heads.
I thought that it would strike the valley not far below us. "Come! Get
up!" I cried. "Let's run back as fast as we can!"
"Not so! We must run the other way. Can't you hear? It is going to
strike either where we are, or close behind us," Pitamakan answered; and
grasping my arm, he tried to make me go forward with him.
"Can't you hear it there?" I shouted, taking hold of him in my turn and
pulling the other way. "It is coming down right where we stand, or not
far below here!"
And thus we stood while the dreadful noise increased, until it seemed as
if the world was being rent wide open. There was a confusion of
thunderous sound--the grinding of rocks and ice, the crashing and
snapping of great trees. The avalanche came nearer with terrific speed,
until finally it filled all the region round with such a deafening noise
that it was impossible even to guess where it would sweep down into the
valley.
We ran a few steps upstream, then as many more back, and finally stood
trembling, quite uncertain which way to fly. But only for a moment; just
ahead of us the great forest trees began to leap out and downward from
the steep mountain-side, and then the mass of the avalanche burst into
the flat and piled up a hundred feet deep before us--a dirty ridge of
wrecked mountain-side that extended away across the valley to the river.
There was a last rumble and cracking of branches as it settled, and then
all was still.
"You see that I was right," I said. "It did strike below us."
"Yes, you heard better than I did," my partner admitted, "but that is
not what saved us. I am sure that the gods caused the pack-thong to
break and stop us; otherwise we should have been right in the path of
the slide."
Re-slinging our packs, we climbed the rough mass of the slide, round and
over big boulders, ice blocks, and tree trunks, through piles of brush
and broken branches. At the apex of the heap Pitamakan reached down,
pulled something from the earth-stained snow, and passed it to me. It
was the head and neck of a mountain goat, crushed almost flat, the
flesh of which was still warm.
[Illustration: THE AVALANCHE BURST INTO THE FLAT]
"You see what would have happened to us if my pack-thong had not
broken," he said grimly.
"It must be that many goats perish in this way," I remarked.
"Yes, and also many bighorn," he said. "I have heard the old hunters say
that the bears, when they first come out in the spring, get their living
from these slides. They travel from one to another, and paw round in
search of the dead animals buried in them."
At daylight we entered an open park where we could see back toward the
summit. There was no doubt that we had traveled a long way during the
night, for the mountain opposite our abandoned lodge looked twenty miles
distant. The valley here was fully a mile wide, and the mountains
bordering it were covered with pines clear to the summit. They were not
more than a thousand feet high, and the western rim of them seemed not
more than fifteen miles away. We believed that from where they ended
the distance could not be great to the lake of the Flatheads.
Down here the snow was only about four feet deep, less than half the
depth of it where we had wintered. The air became warm much earlier in
the morning than it did up there. Using the snowshoes now, as the crust
was getting weak, we kept going, although very tired. During the two
hours that we were able to travel after sunrise, we passed great numbers
of elk, and not a few moose, and when, finally, the snow grew spongy and
obliged us to stop for the day, we were plainly within the deer range,
for both white-tail and mule-deer were as plentiful as jack-rabbits are
in certain parts of the plains.
We stopped for our much-needed rest on a bare sandbar of the river, and
with bow and drill started a little fire and roasted some dry meat. The
sun shone warm there, and after eating, we lay down on the sand and
slept until almost night.
Starting on again as soon as the snow crusted, we traveled the rest of
the night without any trouble, and soon after daybreak suddenly passed
the snow-line and stepped into green-sprouting grass. The summer birds
had come, and were singing all round us. A meadow-lark, on a bush close
by, was especially tuneful, and Pitamakan mocked it:
"_Kit-ah-kim ai-siks-is-to-ki!_" (Your sister is dark-complexioned!) he
cried gleefully. "Oh, no, little yellow-breast, you make a mistake. I
have no sister."
We were in the edge of a fine prairie dotted with groves of pine and
cottonwood. The land sloped gently to the west. I thought that it could
not be far in that direction to the big lake, but Pitamakan said that it
was way off to the southwest, perhaps two days' journey from where we
were. Suddenly he fell on his knees and began with feverish haste to dig
up a slender, green-leaved plant.
"It is camass!" he cried, holding it up and wiping the earth from the
white, onion-shaped root. "Dig! Dig! See, there are plenty of them all
round. Eat plenty of them. They are good."
So they were; crisp, starchy, and rather sweet. After our winter-long
diet of meat, they were exactly what our appetites craved and our
systems needed. We made a meal of them right there. For once hunger got
the better of our caution. Laying down our pack and snowshoes, we dug up
root after root, all the time moving out into prairie farther and
farther from the edge of the timber.
"Come on! Let's get our packs and hide somewhere for the day," I said
finally. "I am filled with these things to the neck."
"Oh, wait a little; I want a few more," my partner answered.
Just then a band of deer burst out of a cottonwood grove about five
hundred yards to the west of us, and as we sat staring and wondering
what had startled them, three Indians came riding like the wind round
one side of the grove, and four more appeared on the other side, in
swift pursuit of the animals.