"Don't you move!" Pitamakan exclaimed.
He spoke just in time, for I was on the point of springing up and
running for the timber. The game--they were mule-deer, which are not
fleet runners, like the white-tail--came bouncing awkwardly toward us,
while the Indians gained on them perceptibly. Never before had I felt
that I was a giant; but as I sat there in the short grass of the open
prairie, I felt as if my body was actually towering into the sky. I
instinctively tried to make myself of smaller size. All my muscles
quivered and contracted so tensely that the feeling was painful. "Oh,
come!" I cried. "Can't you see that they--"
"Be still!" Pitamakan broke in. "The wind is from us to them. The deer
will soon turn. Our one chance is to sit motionless. They haven't seen
us yet."
The deer came steadily toward us, jumping awkwardly and high. They were
now less than four hundred yards away, and although the wind was
increasing, they gave no sign of having scented us.
"They must turn soon," Pitamakan said. "But if they don't, and you see
that the Indians are coming for us, string your bow. Let us fight our
best until our end comes."
That had been my thought. I had two of our five obsidian-pointed arrows.
If worse came to worst, I hoped that I should be able to speed them
swift and true. Now the deer were less than three hundred yards from us,
and I gave up all hope that they would turn. To me the Indians seemed to
be staring straight at us instead of at the animals.
I had started to reach for my bow and arrows, which lay on the ground
beside me, when the deer did turn, suddenly and sharply to the right.
The pursuers, turning also, almost at the same time, gained
considerably on them. I realized that we had not been discovered.
The leading hunter now raised his gun and fired. The hornless old buck
at the head of the band sharply shook his head, and holding it askew as
if the bullet had stung it, swerved to the right again, directly away
from us. The herd followed him, while the hunters again made a short cut
toward them and began shooting. Their backs were now to us.
"Run! Run for the timber!" my partner commanded; and grabbing my bow and
arrows, I followed him, faster, probably, than I had ever run before. It
was a hundred yards or more to the timber. As we neared it, I began to
hope that we should get into its shelter unseen. Behind us the hunters
kept shooting at the deer, but neither of us took time to look back
until we came to our packs, and paused to lift them and the snowshoes.
At that very moment the war-cry of the enemy was raised, and we knew
that they had discovered us. We looked, and saw that they were coming
our way as fast as their horses could lope. And how they did yell! There
was menace in those shrill staccato yelps.
"We must leave the furs. Just take your snowshoes and come on," said
Pitamakan, and I grabbed them up and followed him.
It was only a few yards back in the timber to the snow-line. Upon
reaching it, I threw down my shoes, stuck my toes into the loops, and
was starting on without fastening the ankle-thongs, when my partner
ordered me to tie them properly. It seemed to me that my fingers had
never been so clumsy.
We stepped up on the snow, and found that the crust was still strong
enough to bear our weight, although it cracked and gave slightly where
the centre of the poor webbing sagged under our feet. At the edge of the
prairie the timber was scattering; but back a short distance there were
several dense thickets, and back of them again was the line of the
heavy pine forest. We made for the nearest thicket, while the yells of
the enemy sounded nearer and louder at every step we took.
It was easy to guess when they came to the fur packs, for there was a
momentary stop in the war-cries as they loudly disputed over the
possession of them. Then, abandoning their horses, they began shooting
at us as they advanced into the snow, through which they broke and
floundered at almost every step.
The advantage was now all with us, provided we were not hit. Once I
stopped behind a tree for an instant and looked back. Three of the men
had not tried to come on over the snow, but standing at the edge of it,
loaded and fired as fast as possible. The others were doing their best
to advance over the crust, and had our plight not been so desperate, I
should have laughed to see them. They stepped gingerly, teetering along
with open mouths and arms outspread, and sometimes the crust would
bear their weight for three or four paces, and so increase their
confidence that they would quicken their speed, only to break through
and sink waist-deep.
[Illustration: I GRABBED THEM UP AND FOLLOWED HIM]
I pushed a flap of my old capote out from the tree as far as I could
with the bow, in the hope of drawing their fire; but, finding that they
were not to be caught by any such ruse, I hurried on. Then several
bullets came so close to me that I could feel the wind from them; one
struck a tree which I was passing, and flicked off bits of bark, which
stung my left cheek and cut the lobe of my left ear. When the enemy saw
me raise my hand to my face, they yelled with triumph, and Pitamakan
turned to see what had happened.
"Go on! It is nothing!" I called out.
At that instant another shot was fired, and I thought that I heard my
partner give a little cry of pain; but he did not flinch, and continued
on as rapidly as before. When I came where he had been, however, I saw
that his trail was bloody, and I feared the worst, for I well knew that
even with a death-wound he would keep on bravely to the very end. The
rest of the run to the thicket was like some terrible dream to me, for I
expected that every step he made would be his last. But finally he
passed into the screen of young evergreens, and a moment later I was
beside him, asking how badly he was hurt.
"It is only a flesh-wound here," he answered, gripping the inner part of
his left thigh. "Come on, we mustn't stop."
As the enemy could no longer see us, we made our way to the line of big
timber without fear of their bullets. They gave a few last yells as we
went into the thicket, and shouted some words at us, which of course we
could not understand. And then all was still.
Without a word, Pitamakan went on and on up the steep mountain-side, and
I sadly followed him. Soon, coming to an opening in the timber, we
stepped out into it, until we could get a good view of the plain below.
The Indians were riding back to where they had chased the deer. Soon
they dismounted and began skinning two that they had killed. We removed
our snowshoes and sat down on them. Pitamakan let down his legging and
washed his wound with snow; the bullet had split open the skin for a
length of several inches, but fortunately, had not torn the muscles. As
soon as the wound was washed and dry, I went over to a balsam fir and
gathered the contents of three or four blisters, which he smeared all
over the raw place. In a few minutes he said that the pungent, sticky
stuff had stopped the burning of the wound.
We were two sad boys that morning. The loss of the furs, for which we
had worked so hard all winter, was not easy to bear. Every few minutes
Pitamakan would cry out to his gods to punish the thieves, and my heart
was as sore against them as his. With the fur packs we had lost also our
fire-drill and socket piece.
"But that doesn't matter," Pitamakan said. "We have good bows and can
make a drill at any time. Perhaps we shall never again have any use for
one!"
"How so? Are we never to eat again? Shall we not need fire of nights to
keep us warm?" I asked.
"Maybe we shall and maybe not," Pitamakan replied. "It is not likely
that those hunters will go home without trying to take our scalps with
them; we'll soon know about that."
We watched the men in silence for some little time. Four of them were
round one deer, and three were at work skinning the other. Soon,
however, one man left each group and began cutting willows. Soon
afterward we saw that those remaining had got the deer hides off and
were cutting them into strips.
"I thought that they would do that," said my partner. "They are going to
make snowshoes and follow us. Hurry now, and fasten on your shoes!"
I did as I was told and asked no questions. Pitamakan limped badly when
he started off, but made light of his lameness and insisted that he felt
no pain. By this time the sun was fast weakening the crust; in a short
time neither we nor our enemy would be able to travel, and I told my
partner that while they were making their shoes, we ought to get so far
ahead that they never would be able to overtake us.
"They are seven, we only two," he said. "They will break trail by turns
when the snow gets soft. Our chance to escape is to get back to the dry
prairie while they are climbing the mountain on our trail."
That was a plan that had never entered my head, but I instantly saw its
possibilities. Left to my own resources, I should only have struggled on
and on into the mountains, eventually to be captured.
For an hour or more, just as long as the crust would hold, we kept along
the side of the mountain parallel with the river; then, when the crust
at last broke with us at every step, we took off our snowshoes and
floundered down the tremendously steep slope to the stream, and turning
with it, walked and ran along the gravelly and sandy shore.
So, not later than mid-afternoon, we came again to the foot of the
mountain, and walking to the edge of the timber bordering the river,
looked out on the prairie from which we had been driven in the morning.
"_Sum-is! Sum-is!_" Pitamakan cried, pointing away south to the place of
the deer chase.
"_I-kit-si-kum! Sap-un-is-tsim!_" (Seven! The whole number!) I
exclaimed. The horses of the enemy were picketed out there and quietly
grazing, but not one of the hunters was to be seen. It seemed too good
to be true.
We stood still for some time, while we searched the prairie and the
mountain-side for sign of the enemy.
"They seem all to have taken our trail," said Pitamakan, at last, "and
maybe that is the way of it. If one has remained to watch the horses,
he must be lying in that little pine grove near them. Let's go down the
river a little farther, then swing round and sneak into the grove from
the other side."
We hurried on in the river-bottom for half a mile, and then swung out
across the open ground. Our hearts throbbed with hope, and with fear,
too, as we approached the one place where a guard might be stationed.
Stealing into the little grove as silently as shadows, we moved through
it so slowly that a red squirrel digging in the needle-covered earth
near by never noted our passing. There was not more than an acre of the
young trees, and they covered a space twice as long as wide, so we were
able to see every foot of it as we passed along. When we were nearing
the farther end, a coyote gave us a terrible scare; as he rose up behind
a thin screen of low boughs, we could not see at first just what it
was.
I have heard of people turning cold from fear; maybe they do, but fear
does not affect me in that way. A flash of heat swept through me; my
mouth grew dry. My sense of being perfectly helpless, my expectation
that a bullet would come tearing into me, was something that I shall
never forget.
This time the suspense was short; the coyote walked boldly off in the
direction in which we were going, and since the wind was in our faces,
we instantly realized that no man was concealed out there ahead of him.
Still, Pitamakan was cautious and, in spite of my urgent signs, kept on
as stealthily as before. But when we came to the edge of the grove, we
saw the coyote was walking jauntily round among the feeding horses.
Off to the right, near one of the deer carcasses, lay the hunters'
saddles, saddle-blankets and other stuff. We found also a litter of
willow cuttings and short strips of deer hide where the hunters had made
their snowshoes. The saddles were all home-made, but better than none.
We each selected one and the best of the blankets, and began saddling
the two most sturdy and swift-looking of the seven animals. That done,
we turned the remaining five loose, after removing their lariats and
throwing them away. Then we got into the saddle and started to gather up
the loose stock, when I suddenly thought of something that we had
entirely forgotten in our excitement.
"Pitamakan! Our furs! Where can they be?" I asked.
"There! There!" he answered, pointing to where the other deer carcass
lay.
And sure enough, there the two packs were, just as we had bound them.
Here was more luck! We lost no time in riding over to the place and
picking them up; then, driving the other horses ahead of us, we rode
away to the southwest as fast as possible. Somewhere on the big,
timbered mountain behind us, the enemy were worming along on our trail;
or, what is more likely, completely exhausted from struggling in the
soft snow, they were waiting for the night freeze, to enable them to go
on.
The loose horses trotted ahead of us most willingly--suspiciously so;
and in the course of half an hour, on our coming to a strip of timber,
the reason for such unusual conduct was plain. Here was a broad, hard
trail that led, no doubt, directly to the camp which they had come from
in the morning. Of course they were willing to be driven back to their
mates! And now, as we pushed along this highway, one and another of them
began to nicker, a sure sign that the camp was not far distant.
There were only three or four hundred yards of the timber, and then
another big prairie; and at the farther end of this, a couple of miles
away, smoke was rising from another patch of timber, near which many
horses were grazing.
"There! There is the camp of the enemy!" Pitamakan cried. "Already they
may have seen us! Let's get back into the timber as quick as we can."
That was not easy to do; the loose stock wanted to keep right on toward
their mates, and it required hard riding to head them off and turn them
back. And then when we did accomplish it, they were very restless; it
was only by the greatest vigilance that we kept them from breaking back.
While the sun slowly sank toward the horizon, we waited in suspense, for
there was a chance that the party of seven, or some other party, might
appear at any moment. The thought that, after our great success of the
day, we might lose everything, and our lives also, kept us keyed up to
an intense pitch of excitement.
Toward sunset there was a commotion among the horse herds at the farther
end of the prairie, and two riders came loping straight toward us. At
first we were not much alarmed, for we thought that they were only
looking for some stray animal from the bands; but they kept coming
straight on, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and it was
soon plain, either that they had seen us and were going to have a look
at our outfit, or that they were going to take the trail through the
timber, in search, probably, of the missing hunters whose horses we had
rounded up. There was but one thing for us to do--hustle the animals as
far from the trail as possible; and going at it in a whirl of
excitement, we hissed at them, flicked them with our bridle-ropes, and
struck them with dead limbs that we snatched from the trees.
Never were horses so obstinate; they simply ducked their heads to the
missiles and milled round and round among the trees and underbrush. We
had got them no more than a bow-shot away from the trail, when, looking
out into the open, we saw that the riders had almost reached the thin
belt of timber that screened us.
"Get off your horse and try to hold him still there behind that brush!"
my partner called out; and off I slid and grasped the animal by the nose
and one ear.
We could plainly hear now the thud of the oncoming horses. If one of the
seven animals we had should nicker, we were lost. Presently the two
riders entered the timber, and we could see them plainly as they sped
along the trail. Tall, heavy men they were, with long, flying hair and
grim faces. Each carried a long gun.
When they came in sight, my animal pricked up his ears and began to
prance and toss his head, but I hung to him desperately, although I was
hoisted more than once clear off the ground. As I swung and bobbed in
the air, I got flashing glimpses of the enemy, of Pitamakan struggling
with his animal, and of the loose stock looking curiously at the scene.
I expected every instant that one of them would whinny, but not one of
them did!
The two men passed swiftly along the trail out of sight, and the beat
of their horses' hoofs died slowly away. Then once more we took hope.
The sun was down and darkness was stealing over the land. Faint from
this last narrow escape, we got into the saddle once more, and leaving
the loose stock to stray whither they would, rode out into the open and
took a course down the prairie that would leave the big camp far to our
right. Passing it a little later, we could see the dim, yellow glow of
the lodge fires, and hear the people singing, and the dogs barking now
and then in answer to the mocking yelps of the coyotes.
We traveled on through the night in a partly timbered country, and, by
God's mercy, safely forded some streams that were raging spring
torrents. It was between midnight and dawn that we finally gave out,
and, picketing our animals, lay down and slept. But the first peep of
the sun roused us. Staggering to our feet, stiff and sore, we saddled,
and rode on again in a half stupor. It was past noon when, from the
edge of a sloping plain, we saw the big lake of the Flatheads. Pitamakan
knew the place at once.
"Down there by the shore was the big camp the time we were here," he
said, "and over there by the side of that little river runs the trail to
buffalo land."
We came to it a little later, a broad, well-worn trail that had been
used for countless years for summer travel by the mountain tribes. There
were no tracks in it now save those of the wolf and the deer.
Dismounting beside it to rest the horses, we took a few bites of dry
meat, while they greedily cropped the tender spring grass.
We did not remain there long. Behind us stretched the trail of our
horses, plain enough in the young green grass, a trail that could be
easily followed from where we had first taken the animals. We went on
all through the afternoon eastward into the mountains. Here the
mountains were low, and in the still lower pass there was no snow to
block us. Indeed, Two Medicine Pass is so low that you cannot tell when
you pass the summit except by the changed course of the streamlets.
Late the next afternoon we caught a glimpse of the great plains,
stretching green from the foot of the mountains away eastward to the far
horizon; and at sight of them we both shouted, and Pitamakan gave thanks
to his gods. Down at the foot of the mountains we saw a little later
four buffalo bulls, and gave greeting to them as if they were our
brothers. But not appreciating our feelings, they ran lumbering away.
Two days afterward we came to the edge of the hill overlooking Fort
Benton and the Missouri, our stream of streams. The sight of it, and of
our own people walking here and there outside the fort and along the
river, brought tears to our eyes and great joy and peace to our hearts.
We urged our weary horses down the hill and across the bottom. An Indian
boy, hunting horses, met us while we were yet some distance out, gave
one look at our faces, and fled straight to the Blackfeet camp by the
fort.
The people instantly poured out of the lodges and came running to greet
us. Surrounded by several hundred of them, all talking at once and
asking a thousand questions, we rode into the great courtyard. There,
foremost of the company folk who came out to see what was the cause of
all the noise, were my uncle and his wife.
They fairly tore me from my horse, smothered and crushed me with kisses
and embraces, and were for leading me straight to our quarters; but I
would not budge an inch until I had secured my precious pack of furs
from the saddle and had given the worn animal into the keeping of one of
Pitamakan's relatives.
By that time the factor himself had come from his office, and I had then
and there to tell the story of our winter and our hardships in the great
mountains. How the people hung upon my words, how they applauded and
cheered! Without doubt those were the proudest moments of my life. For a
mere boy to hold those seasoned old voyageurs and plainsmen spellbound
was something of a feat, you may be sure.
But at last it was all over, and once more I entered our little house
and sat down on my own soft couch of buffalo-robes. As the evening was
chilly, a cheerful fire was blazing in the hearth. Tsis-tsak-ki bustled
round, and while cooking the supper, managed to get out clean clothes
for me, and get ready a tub of water, soap, and towels. Never before had
I seen my Uncle Wesley so excited; he could not sit still. Every few
moments he would come over and pinch my arm, or slap me on my back, just
to make sure, as he explained, that I was really with them once more.
So ended my first great adventure on the frontier that was, and is no
more.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A