A VERY OLD TRAIL
During all that was left of that happy day in the Nez Perce camp there
was an immense amount of broiling and boiling done. Whoever left the
great business of eating enough and went and sat down or lay down got up
again after a while and did some more remarkable eating. All the life of
an Indian trains him for that kind of thing, for he goes on in a sort of
continual vibration from feast to famine.
All the other boys in camp were as hungry as Two Arrows, and as their
hunger went down their envy of him went up; he had suddenly stepped
ahead of them and had become an older boy in a moment. It was very much
as if a boy of his age in the "settlements" had waked up, some fine
morning, with a pair of mustaches and a military title, uniform and all.
Two Arrows was entitled to strut a little, and so was One-eye, but for
some reason neither of them was inclined to anything but eating and
lying down. One-eye may have felt lonely, for he found himself the only
dog in all that camp, and he knew very well what had become of the dogs
he used to know: they had gone to the famine, and there had been no
sort of funeral ceremonies, and now there could be no kind of neighborly
quarrel over bones any more. There was a reason, why One-eye should
attach himself more closely than ever to his master and follow his every
movement. They had killed two buffaloes in company, and there was no
telling what they might or might not yet do if they kept together.
Two Arrows found the effects of his long fasting rapidly passing away,
but he was like everybody else and needed a big sleep. One-eye had the
only eye that did any watching all that night, and nobody but the fat
squaw was up very early next morning. Her next company was the Big
Tongue, and he at once began to talk about the game he intended to kill,
now he had had something to eat. Two Arrows might not have been the next
riser if it had not been for a friendly tug from One-eye, but the moment
he was awake he knew that he was hungry again. He was hungry, but he was
silent, and it was plain that he was thinking about something uncommonly
interesting. He stood in front of his father's lodge, waiting for the
breakfast that was now sure to come, when a light hand was laid upon his
arm and a soft musical voice exclaimed, triumphantly,
"Two Arrows! Name!"
"Ugh," said he. "Na-tee-kah."
He hardly looked around, but the pleasantest face in all that band was
smiling upon him. It bore a strong resemblance to his own, and belonged
to an Indian girl a year or so younger than himself. She was well grown,
slender, and graceful, and had a pair of eyes as brilliant as his, but a
great deal more gentle and kindly in their expression. They lacked the
restless, searching, eager look, and his, indeed were quieter than they
had been the day before.
"Got plenty to eat now," she said. "Not starve to death any more."
"Eat all up," replied he. "Fool! Starve again, pretty soon."
"No, Long Bear and old men say, keep all there is left. Work to-day. Dry
meat. Go hunting somewhere else. Not stay here."
There was a little more talk that indicated a very fair degree of
affection between the brother and sister, and then Two Arrows said to
her,
"Keep tongue very still. Come."
She followed him to the lower edge of the camp, and he silently pointed
her to the place where the old buffalo trail came in.
"Great many make that. Long time. All know why."
"The cow came in there."
"Ugh! now come."
She followed him now to the upper end of the camp, and he pointed again
to the trail, deeply and plainly made, going on into the gorges of the
mountains.
"Buffalo go that way; Two Arrows follow. Say no word. Not find him
pretty soon."
That was the meaning of all his thoughtfulness. He meant to set off on a
hunt of his own planning, without asking permission of anybody. Two days
earlier he would not have dreamed of such a piece of insubordination.
Now he had won his right to do that very thing, and he meant to take
advantage of it instantly. All the young ambition in him had been
stirred to the boiling point, and his only remaining anxiety was to get
a good supply of provisions and get out of the camp without being seen
by anybody. He could look out for his weapons, including several of his
father's best arrows, and Na-tee-kah at once promised to steal for him
all the meat he wanted. She went right into his plan with the most
sisterly devotion, and her eyes looked more and more like his when she
next joined her mother and the other squaws at their camp-fire. There
was no doubt but what her brother would have his marching rations
supplied well, and of the best that was to be had.
There was no need for Two Arrows to steal from Long Bear. What between
pride and buffalo meat the old chief was ready to give or rather lend
him anything, and he deemed it his heroic son's day to parade and show
off. He was entitled to do so with the best weapons in his father's
collection. The day would surely come when he would be allowed to paint
himself and do a great many other things belonging to full-grown braves
and warriors. It was even lawful for him to wear a patch or two of paint
now, and Na-tee-kah helped him to put it on. If he had been a white boy
with his first standing-collar, he could not have been more particular,
and every other boy in camp had something to say to the others about the
fit of that vermilion.
It was a day of drying and smoking meat, and of eating as much as the
older men permitted, and everybody wore an aspect of extreme good-humor
except One-eye and his master. The dog and the boy alike kept away from
the camp-fires and from all grown-up Indians. Towards the middle of the
afternoon, Na-tee-kah slipped quietly out at the upper end of the camp,
carrying her own buckskin sack nearly full of something, and nobody
thought of asking her what there might be in it. She had not been gone
many minutes before anybody loafing at that end of the camp might have
seen her brother was following her. He had been standing near the spring
for some time, in full rig, for the other boys to admire him, and now he
walked dignifiedly away as if he were weary of being looked at. Half a
mile farther up the rugged valley he caught up with Na-tee-kah, and she
returned to camp without her bead-worked sack. There was nothing at all
noticeable in the whole affair, unless some suspicious person had been
closely watching them. It was after sunset before there was any special
inquiry for Two Arrows, and it was dark before Na-tee-kah expressed her
belief that he had "gone hunt." She replied freely to every question
asked her, well knowing that there would be no pursuit, but she was more
than a little relieved when the old chief, instead of getting angry
about it, swelled up proudly and remarked,
"Two Arrows! young brave. All like father, some day. Kill more buffalo."
Then Na-tee-kah felt courage to speak about the trail and her brother's
reasoning as to where it might lead to. She had her ears boxed for that,
as it had a sound of giving advice to her elders, but it was not long
before her father gravely informed a circle of the warriors and braves
that the path pointed out by the buffalo cow was the one by which they
must seek for more like her. It was very easy to convince them that they
could do nothing upon the dry, sunburnt plains, or by staying to starve
again in that camp. The objection made by Big Tongue that nobody knew
where that old trail might carry them was met by Long Bear conclusively.
He picked up a dry pony-bone that lay on the ground and held it out to
Big Tongue.
"All other trail go this way. Know all about it. Been there."
It was enough. It was better to follow an unknown trail than to starve,
and it was not long before it leaked out that Two Arrows was believed to
have gone ahead of them on that very road.
Precisely how far he had gone nobody had any idea. They would hardly
have believed if he had sent back word, for he had travelled most
diligently. There were no longer any traces of starvation about him,
except that he carried no superfluous weight of flesh. He had load
enough, what with his provisions and his weapons, but he did not seem to
mind it. He tramped right along, with a steady, springy step, which told
a good deal of his desire to get as far away from camp as he could
before his absence should be discovered.
For a little distance he had found the trail rising gently with the
land. Then it turned to the left and went up and over a rocky hill, and
then it turned to the right again, and just about sunset it looked for
all the world as if it were running right into the side of a great
precipice of the mountain range. The light of the sinking sun fell
clearly and brightly upon the grand masses of quartz and granite rocks,
and showed him the very point where the pathway seemed to end. It looked
so, but Two Arrows knew that you cannot cut off the end of a buffalo
path in that way, and he pushed on, every moment finding the way steeper
and more winding. He could not make any "short cuts" over such ground
as that, and every Indian boy knows a fact which the white engineers of
the Pacific Railway found out for themselves--that is, that a herd of
buffaloes will always find the best passes through mountain ranges, and
then they will go over them by the best and easiest grades. Only by
bridging a chasm, or blasting rocks, or by much digging, did the railway
men ever improve upon the paths pointed out by the bisons.
Two Arrows had carefully marked his point, and just as the last rays of
daylight were leaving him he sat down to rest in the mouth of what was
little better than a wide "notch" in the side of the vast barrier.
"Ugh! pass," he said.