TRACKING A MOUNTAIN LION
Now, while old Red Crane was teaching Sinopah to hunt and kill game with
bow and arrow, Otaki's mother was teaching her to do woman's work. The
little lodge had been set up for the children in the shelter of thick
willow brush where the wind could not blow, and they now had many happy
days in it. Lone Bull, Otaki's brother, was with them, and the two boys
hunted, while Otaki gathered small pieces of deadwood for the fire,
brought water from the river in a small pot, and did all the other work
of the lodge, such as sweeping the hard, smooth earth floor with a broom
made of a bunch of willow brush, and straightening out the soft robe
couches.
Some days the boys would hunt a long time and come home to the little
lodge without anything. Other times they would bring in a couple of
prairie chickens, or one or two rabbits. Arriving at the door of the
lodge they would cry out: "Otaki, we have arrived. Come get the meat we
have killed."
The little girl would then come out and say: "Kyai-yo! What a fine
killing my hunters have made. Go inside now, and I will soon have meat
on the fire."
Then, while the two boys sat on their couches before the fire and dried
their wet moccasins, she took her little knife from the sheath dangling
from her belt, and skinned and cleaned the rabbits or birds, then
brought them inside and roasted them on the hot, bright-red coals. It is
true that the meat did not taste so good as that of the buffalo and deer
and elk and antelope that their fathers brought to camp, but they
pretended that it was even better because they had killed it. They were
very proud of being able to get their own food from the timber along the
river. White children would not have liked the chicken and rabbit meat
that Otaki cooked, because she did not put any salt on it. The Indians
never used salt before the white people taught them to put it in their
food, and even to this day many of them do not care for it.
One day the two boys went away down the river, farther than they had yet
gone on their hunts, and found three bullberry bushes still full of
fruit. When first ripe, these berries are so sour that no one can eat
them; but the freezing weather of winter turns certain of the acids into
sugar, and then the berries taste something like currants, only very
much better. They have both a tart and a sweet taste, and not only the
Indians but birds are very fond of them, the prairie chickens
especially.
When the boys found the three bushes, or rather small trees full of the
fruit, the first thing they did was to strip off bunches of the ripe,
red berries and eat them. They wondered how it was that the birds and
the women of the camp had not long since found and taken them all.
They soon ate all they could hold, and then said Lone Bull: "We should
have all these berries for our lodge; there is a great quantity of them;
enough to last us all winter."
"You talk wisely," Sinopah answered. "But of course gathering berries is
not men's work. It is best that we bring Otaki up here to gather them."
"But she isn't strong enough for that," Lone Bull objected. "Of course
she should come and help, but I think that we ought to get our mothers
to do the work."
"Well, then, you go after them and I will stay here and keep any one who
may come along from taking the berries," said Sinopah. "No one shall
have them: they are our find."
At that Lone Bull started off on the run for camp. Sinopah ate a few
more berries and then began to get cold from standing still so long. He
started to walk around, faster and faster, and farther and farther from
the trees, and on a larger circle than ever came to some strange-looking
tracks in the snow. They were big, round tracks, but not far apart; not
near so far as he could step. Most of them showed the heel of the feet,
so it was easy to see which way the animal had been going. He looked at
the tracks a long time. "Now, if Grandfather Red Crane were only here,
he could tell me what kind of an animal made these tracks," he said to
himself.
Sinopah made another circle and once more came to the strange-looking
tracks. "I do wish I knew what animal made them," he said. "Well, I will
just follow them a little way and perhaps I can learn what it was."
The trail of the animal was away from the river and toward a sandstone
cliff. Sinopah followed it through the timber. At one place the animal
had stood on its hind feet and clawed the trunk of a cottonwood tree,
scattering many small pieces of the bark around on the snow. A little
farther on, it had stood looking and listening for something, for here
the snow was all packed smooth by its big feet. Still farther on, it had
sat down in the snow, and had left the imprint of a long tail. By that
Sinopah knew that this was not the trail of a bear, for bears' tails are
no longer than a boy's hand.
"It isn't a wolf either," he thought, "for wolves have very bushy tails.
The mark of this one in the snow looks as if it has very short hair.
Why, it may be that I am following an otter."
Thinking that, he hurried forward on the trail and soon came near the
sandstone cliff. Here there was not so much timber. The ground sloped
sharply up to the foot of the cliff, and on it were scattered a number
of large and small rocks. He could see the trail winding around among
the rocks, and said to himself again, "It must be an otter's trail."
He did not stop to think that the tracks were ten times too large to
have been made by an otter. Nor did he know that an otter, when
traveling through snow, does not walk: it lays its front feet back
against its breast and pushes itself along with its hind feet, making a
smooth trough in the snow with two dots in it at intervals, like this:--
* * * *
* * * *
Sinopah now began climbing the slope, and soon came to the very foot of
the cliff. Right in front of him the trail ended at the mouth of a
narrow low hole in the rock. He walked right up to it and tried to see
in, to see the animal, but a few feet back there was nothing but the
darkness of night. Then on the floor of the cave he saw some bones; big
leg-bones and rib and backbones that looked like those of buffalo and
deer, and he suddenly became scared. It was enough to scare any boy,
that black cave, the freshly gnawed bones with shreds of red meat still
hanging to them. He suddenly gave a little squeal of fright and ran back
down the slope and toward the bullberry patch as fast as he could go.
No one was there to meet him and he ran on and on toward camp, soon
meeting his mother and old Red Crane and Lone Bull and Otaki and their
mother. As quickly as he could, he told the old man about the trail of
the animal and the cave and gnawed bones.
"Ah ha! And you saw gnawed bones in the cave!" Red Crane exclaimed. "And
the tracks leading to the place were big and round? Well, my young
hunter, it was not an otter you were following, it was a lynx; perhaps
even a mountain lion."
"Kyai-yo!" the women cried out. "To think that he followed a sometimes
killer of children!"
And his mother snatched him up in her arms and said that he should not
go anywhere alone again for a long time.
"Huh! the boys must learn," said Red Crane; "and anyhow no harm has been
done. Now, son, you go tell your father to come with his guns and the
dogs, and be sure to tell no one else; we want all the berries and the
animal in the cave for ourselves."
White Wolf was at home in the lodge. When Sinopah told him what was
wanted he snatched up his rifle, called the big dogs, and set out so
fast on the trail that the boy had to run to keep up with him. They soon
overtook the others, and in a few minutes all were looking at the trail
in the snow, while the dogs sniffed at it and growled, their hair
bristling straight up on their backs.
"It is the trail of a mountain lion," said White Wolf.
"It is," Red Crane echoed, "and a very large one, too."
White Wolf started to follow the trail and made the dogs keep behind
him. After them came old Red Crane, and then the women and children.
They all soon arrived at the foot of the slope leading up to the cave,
and then White Wolf told them to stand where they were while he went on
with the dogs.
When quite near the foot of the cliff, he told the dogs to go on, and
they rushed ahead on the fresh trail all in a bunch and barking eagerly.
But the moment they arrived at the mouth of the cave, and looking in
smelled the animal there, all at once they dropped their tails between
their legs and backed away with hoarse growls. They were not
hunting-dogs like our hounds. All they were good for was to guard camp,
and, before the time of the horse, to carry burdens. White Wolf scolded
them, but could not make them go into the cave. They just whined and
shivered, and looked at him with pleading eyes.
Seeing that they would not go in, White Wolf at last cocked his rifle
and walked slowly to the entrance to the cave, then stooped down and
looked in. At first he could see nothing; but he kept looking and
looking, and after a time saw two greenish, shining spots away back in
the darkness, that he knew was the light of the animal's eyes. Then he
raised his rifle and fired it after a long and careful aim.
_Boom_! went the gun, and the powder-smoke for a moment hid the cave
from the view of those watching at the foot of the slope. When White
Wolf fired his rifle he at once sprang off to the left of the cave, and
none too soon. Out of it and through the smoke came a yowling, tawny
mountain lion that rolled and twisted around on the snow while blood
streamed from a bullet-hole in its neck. The dogs now turned brave and
closed in on it, only to be bitten and clawed by the furious big cat,
and knocked off in all directions by its big front paws. Several of them
never stopped running until they reached camp.
Sinopah and the other children, as well as the women and the old man,
stood watching all this from the foot of the slope, all of them so
excited that they never spoke a word. They saw White Wolf hurriedly
reloading his rifle, and were fearing that, after all, the wounded
animal would get up and run before he could shoot it again. But no; with
one last weak kick it suddenly lay still in the snow, and then they all
ran up the slope to look at it. Sinopah took hold of the forelegs and
tried to lift it, but he couldn't; the animal was far bigger and heavier
than he.
"Ha! It is a she deer-killer," said White Wolf; "and by the looks of her
there must be some young ones back there in the cave. Here, father, hold
my gun while I go in there."
He was not gone long, and returned with a wee little mountain lion in
his arms. It was no larger than a house cat, and its light-colored,
fuzzy fur had faint dark spots. It was so young that it did not know
enough to be afraid of man, and when White Wolf stroked it and rubbed
its head, it purred just as our house cats do, only much louder than
they.
"Oh! Oh! Give it to me, father," Sinopah cried, and soon had it wrapped
in a corner of his robe, where it kept right on purring.
While White Wolf and old Red Crane were skinning the big cat, the women
and children went back to the berry patch, where they soon gathered
nearly all of the fruit on the trees, and then they went home to their
lodges, where they spread the berries on clean rawhides to dry. A part
of the fruit was given to Otaki to dry in the little play lodge.
That evening, as Sinopah sat beside his grandfather with the mountain
lion kitten in his arms, he asked why service-berry bushes had so many
sharp thorns.
"Old Man made them grow there," his grandfather replied. "Listen. It was
this way: Old Man made the world, and all the animals and trees, and
everything on it. But if he was a world-maker, he often was very foolish
and forgetful.
"One day Old Man was walking on the edge of a cutbank beside the river,
and happening to look down he saw clusters of beautiful red berries in
the water. He was very hungry, so off came his clothes and off he dived
from the bank to get some of the fruit. But although he swam and dived a
long time he could see no more of the berries, so he climbed up the bank
and lay down. Looking at the water again, there were the berries in it,
just where he had seen them before, and off he dived again after them,
and could not find them when he got into the water.
"And so he kept climbing out on the bank, and diving again after the
berries, until he became so weak that the last time he nearly drowned.
It was all he could do to get back on the bank, and there, happening to
look up, he saw that the little tree over his head was full of berries.
At that he tossed a stick at the branches, and saw that when they moved,
the branches and the berries in the water also moved. Then all at once
he saw that he had nearly died diving after the shadow of the berries,
and that made him very angry. As soon as he could he got up and beat
the tree with a club, and made thorns grow thickly on its branches:
'There! after this all your kind shall have thorns,' he said, 'and those
who want your fruit in plenty must beat it off with clubs.'
"So it is to-day, when our women gather quantities of the berries for
winter use, they have to club it from the branches in order to save
their hands."