With the Indians in the Rockies

by James Willard Schultz

  CHAPTER VIII

  "Where shall we go?" I asked. "This noise seems to come from everywhereand nowhere."

  I looked up at the top of the mountain which we were on, and saw a longstreak of snow extending eastward from it like an immense pennant.

  "Look! It is nothing but the wind that is making that noise!" Iexclaimed. "See how it is driving the snow up there!"

  "Yes," Pitamakan agreed. "But listen. The sound of its blowing does notcome from there any more than from elsewhere. It comes from everydirection up there in the blue."

  We could now see snow flying from the tops of the mountains on theopposite side of the valley. In a few moments the whole summit of therange was lost in a vast haze of drifting, flying snow. But where wewere there was only a gentle breeze from the west, which did notincrease in force. I remembered now that in winter, when fiercenorthwest winds blew across the plains, the summit of the Rockies wasalways hidden by grayish-white clouds. It was a strange sensation tohear the drone of a terrific wind and not feel it, and I said so.

  "Everything is strange in this country," my partner said, dully. "HereWind-Maker lives; and many another of the mountain and forest gods. Wehave to make strong medicine, brother, to escape them."

  This was the first of the terrific winter winds that blow across theNorthwest plains. Many a time thereafter we heard the strange roaringsound that seemed to come from nowhere in particular; but down in thevalley, and even high up on the sides of the mountains, near the lodge,there was never more than a gentle breeze. Pitamakan was alwaysdepressed when we heard the strange roaring, and it made me feelnervous and apprehensive of I knew not what.

  We waded and slid and fell down to the next ledge, and there, workingour way to the edge, we saw some of the goats right beneath us. Therewere seven of them,--old "nannies," two kids, and "billies" one and twoyears old,--all in a close bunch not more than twenty feet below us.Instead of running, they stood and stared up at us vacuously, whiletheir concave faces seemed to heighten their expression of stupidwonder.

  Pitamakan shot one of the nannies. At the same time I drew my bow on oneof the goats, but on second thought eased it, for I might waste aprecious arrow. I had to use all my will power in denying myself thatchance to add another animal to my list of trophies.

  Pitamakan was not wasting any time: _Zip! Zip! Zip!_ he sped hisremaining arrows, reached out for one of mine, and shot it just as anold nannie, awaking to the fact that something was wrong with herkindred, started off to the left at a lumbering gallop, more ungainlyand racking than that of a steer. Here was success, indeed! I was soexcited that I went aimlessly from one to another of the goats, feelingof their heavy coats and smooth, sharp horns.

  Having dressed the animals, we dragged them from the ledges out on thesteep slide, where we fastened them one to another in a novel way.Making a slit down the lower joint of a hind leg, we thrust a fore legof the next animal through it,--between tendon and bone,--then slit thefore leg in the same manner, and stuck a stick in it so that it couldnot slip out. We soon had all five animals fastened in line, and thentaking the first one by the horns, we started down.

  The deep snow was now a help instead of a hindrance; for it kept our towof game from sliding too fast down the tremendously steep incline.Knowing that we were likely to start an avalanche, we kept as close tothe edge of the timber as we could. Even so, I had the feeling which aman has while walking on thin ice over deep water. I tried to pushcautiously through the snow, and looked back anxiously whenever the gamein a particularly steep place came sliding down on us by the mere pullof its own weight.

  Pitamakan was less apprehensive. "If a slide starts, we can probably getout of it by making a rush for the timber," he said. "Anyhow, what is tobe will be, so don't worry."

  We came safe to the foot of the slide, but had time to skin only onegoat before dark; it was slow work with our obsidian knives. As we couldnot safely leave the others unprotected from the prowlers during thenight, we laid them side by side on a heap of balsam boughs, where theair could circulate all round them, and Pitamakan hung his capote on astick right over them, in order that the sight and odor of it mightprevent any wandering lion, lynx, or wolverene from robbing us. To gowithout his capote in such cold weather was certainly a sacrifice onPitamakan's part.

  If I am asked why we took pains to lay the game on boughs, the answer isthat, although any one would think that snow would be a naturalrefrigerator, the opposite is the case, for freshly killed animals willspoil in a few hours if they are buried in it.

  To keep from freezing, Pitamakan hurried on to camp, while I followedslowly with the goatskin and head. There was not time to take the lionor marten from the deadfalls.

  When I got to the lodge, Pitamakan had a fire burning and the last ofthe cow elk ribs roasting over it. We were wet to the skin, of course,but that did not matter. Off came our few garments, to be hung a shorttime over the fire and then put on again. How cheerful and restful itwas to stretch out on our balsam beds and enjoy the heat after the longday's battle with snow and precipitous mountain-sides!

  The next day, and for many days thereafter, we had much work to keep usbusy. We skinned the goats, tanned the hides into soft robes, and sewedthem together in the form of a big bag, with the fur side in. The nighton which we crawled into it for the first time was a great occasion. Onthat night, for the very first time since leaving the Blackfoot camp, weslept perfectly warm and without waking with shivers to rebuild thefire.

  The deadfalls also took a great deal of our time. Every night some ofthem were sprung, and we found from one to three or four valuable furanimals under the drop-bars. It was a tedious job to skin them andproperly stretch the pelts to dry, but for all that, we loved the workand were proud of the result. Here and there in the lodge a few marten,fisher, wolverene, and lynx skins were always drying, and in a cornerthe pile of cured peltries was steadily growing. Three of them were ofmountain lions.

  During this time much more snow fell; it was fully six feet deep in thewoods when the last of the elk hams was broiled and eaten. For a day ortwo we subsisted on goat meat, although the best of it had a slightmusky odor and flavor. As Pitamakan said, it was not real food.

  As our bows were not nearly so strong as they looked, my partner wasalways wishing for glue, so that we might back them with sinew. Therewas material enough for glue, but there was nothing to make it in.

  "The Mandans made pots of earth," I said to him one day. "Perhaps we canmake one that will stand fire and water."

  Out we went along the river to look for clay. At the first cut-bank thatwe came to I gouged off the snow that thinly coated its perpendicularside, and lo! there was a layer of clay six inches thick between twolayers of gravel. We broke out several large flat chunks of thestuff,--it was frozen, of course,--and carried it to the lodge. There,breaking it into fine pieces and thawing it, we added a small amount ofwater, and worked it into a stiff paste of the right consistency, as wethought, for moulding.

  Pitamakan, always artistic, fashioned a thin bowl like those that he hadseen in the Mandan village, while I made mine an inch thick, with acapacity of not more than two quarts. When we baked them in the coals,mine cracked, and Pitamakan's fell to pieces.

  That was discouraging; evidently the clay was not of the rightconsistency. I worked up another portion of clay with less water, whilemy partner added even more water than before to his batch. We each soonhad a bowl fashioned and put to bake. In a few minutes the one whichPitamakan had made fell to pieces, but mine, which was thick and clumsyin shape, seemed to stand the heat well. I gradually increased the fireround it, and after keeping the blaze up for a long time, I allowed thefire at last to die out gradually. The bowl turned out fairly well; foralthough it had one crack in the side, it was dark red in color, andgave a substantial ring when we tapped it with a stick.

  However, we took no chances of a mishap by moving it. We plastered thecrack with fresh clay, and then, putting into it nearly
a quart ofwater, an elk hoof and a couple of goat hoofs, we rebuilt the fire justclose enough to make the mixture simmer, and adding more water from timeto time during the day, patiently awaited results.

  "_Ai-y!_ It is real glue!" Pitamakan exclaimed that evening, afterdipping a stick in the mess and testing it with his fingers. We werequite excited and proud of our success. Softening the four elk sinews inthe hot glue, Pitamakan then plastered a pair of them on each bow. Theplace where the ends overlapped at the centre, he bound with a sinewwrapping.

  Of course the bows were unstrung when the backing was put on, and assoon as the work was done, we laid them away from the fire, that theymight dry slowly. In the morning, the first thing, after crawling out ofour fur nest, we strung and tested them, and found that the backing hadmore than doubled their strength and elasticity. Now we were ready tohunt our winter meat, and after a hurried breakfast of musky goat steak,we started in quest of the game.

  Not since the day of the goat hunt had we seen any tracks of moose, elk,or deer. Pitamakan said that he had heard that the deer went from thehigh mountains down toward the lake of the Flatheads to winter, and thatwe need not expect to see any more of them. But he added that it did notmatter, for other game would yard close round the lodge.

  Taking a zigzag course and examining every red willow patch along ourroute, we went down the valley. As it was a stinging cold day, we hadour hands tucked up in the sleeves of our capotes, and our bows andarrows under our arms, for as yet we had no mittens. Our legs suffered,too, from need of new coverings.

  The first game that we saw was an otter, fishing in a dark pool at thefoot of a rapid. He would crawl out on the ice fringing it, sit stillfor a moment, sniffing the air and looking sharp for any enemy, and thenmake a sudden dive. We watched him until he had brought up a big troutand had begun to eat it, when we turned away without the animal seeingus. Except at close range, the otter's eyesight is poor, but he has akeen nose and sharp ears. Later we intended to set a deadfall for him,if by any means we could catch fish to bait it.

  A mile or more below the lodge we came to a deep, hard-packed trail,which wound and branched in every direction through a big red-willowthicket, which we guessed to be a moose yard. In many places the willowshad been browsed off as far out from the paths as the animals couldstretch their necks. Here and there were large, hard-packed circulardepressions in the snow where they had lain down to rest and sleep,always, I imagine, with one of their number on the watch for anyprowling mountain lion.

  We went down through the centre of the yard, although we had somedifficulty in crossing the deep trails on our snowshoes. Soon we sightedthe game--two cow moose, two calves, and two yearlings. The instant thatthey saw us the old lead cow trotted away down the trail, leading theothers, and then by turning into every successive left-hand fork, triedto circle round behind us. When we headed her off, she turned and triedto circle round us in the other direction. Then Pitamakan and Iseparated, and in that way drove the little band steadily ahead of us,until it reached the lower end of the yard.

  There, with a tremendous leap, the old cow broke out of the yard intothe fresh snow, and the way she made it fly behind her reminded me ofthe stern wheel of a Missouri River steamboat beating up spray. All theothers followed her until we came close, when all but her calf wheeledin the new path and rushed back for the yard.

  They were so close to us that we might almost have touched them.Pitamakan shot an arrow deep between the ribs of the cow, and by a luckyaim I put my one arrow into the calf behind her. Both of them fell, butthe two yearlings, scrambling over their bodies, escaped into the yard.

  We went on in pursuit of the other cow and her calf. The strength thatshe displayed in breaking her way through six feet of snow waswonderful. For at least three hundred yards she went faster than wecould go on our web shoes, but after that she gave out rapidly, andfinally stopped altogether.

  When we came close to her, she plunged back past the calf and stoodawaiting us, determined to protect it to the last. All the hair on hershoulders and back was ruffed and bristling forward, while her eyesblazed with anger, although there was also in them the look of terrorand despair. When we got close to her, she rushed at us. We had to dosome lively scrambling to keep out of her way. But she soon tired, andthen while I attracted her attention, Pitamakan slipped round on theother side of her. As his bow-cord twanged, she dropped her head, andthe light almost instantly went out of her eyes. The poor calf met thesame fate a moment later. It was cruel work, but as necessary as it wascruel; we killed that we might live.

  There remained the two yearlings, and I proposed that we spare them.Pitamakan looked at me with surprise.

  "What! Let them go?" he exclaimed. "And many winter moons yet before us?Why, brother, you talk foolishly! Of course we must kill them. Even thenwe may not have enough meat to last until spring."

  So we chased them also out into deep snow, and did as he said. By thetime we had one calf skinned we were obliged to go home and gather thenight's wood.

  The next day we skinned the rest of the animals, cut up the meat, andhung it in trees, whence it could be packed home from time to time. Twoof the hides we put to soak in the river, preparatory to graining andtanning them. The others we stretched on frames and allowed to freezedry, after which we laid them on our couch.

  During the short days we tended the deadfalls, skinned and stretchedwhat fur was trapped in them, packed in meat and hung it beside thelodge, and tanned the two hides. Having done the tanning successfully,we went into the tailoring business. Pitamakan cut pieces of propershape from the big, soft skins, but in the work of sewing I did myshare. After three or four evenings' work, we were the proud wearers ofnew shirts, new leggings, and new mittens.

  Our earthen pot fell to pieces the day after we had made glue in it.That was a serious loss, for we had intended to boil meat in it. Roastedmeat is good, but does not do so well as a steady diet. The Indians ofthe North regard boiled meat as we regard bread, that is, as the staffof life. Pitamakan, who craved it more than I, determined, now that wehad plenty of hides, to use a part of one for a kettle. From one of theyearling moose hides he cut a large, round piece, soaked it in the riveruntil it was soft, and then sewed the edge in pleats to a birch hoopabout two feet in diameter, so as to make a stiff-rimmed bag about asdeep as it was wide. With a strip of hide he suspended it from a pole inthe lodge roof.

  Next he set several clean stones in the fire to heat, and put somerather finely cut meat in the bag with two quarts of water. When therocks were red-hot, he dropped them one by one into the bag, and pulledthem out to reheat as fast as they cooled. In this way the meat wasboiled. Such was the ancient way of cooking it before the white tradersbrought pots and kettle into the North country.

  The meat was not cooked long, only long enough, in fact to change itscolor, and was really more nutritious than it would have been had itbeen stewed a long time. We enjoyed that first meal of it with keenrelish, and thereafter ate more boiled than roasted meat.

  As the winter snows settled and hardened, we saw more and more trails ofotter along the river, where they traveled from one open hole to anotherto do their fishing, and one day we began our campaign against them bygoing fishing ourselves. Our tackle consisted of a sinew cord and loopseveral feet long, tied to a long, slender pole.

  In the first open pool that we looked into there were numerous trout andsuckers; of course we tried first to snare the trout. We soon learned,however, that it could not be done, for they would not allow the loopto come nearer than five or six inches to their heads, but alwaysdrifted downstream from it in a tantalizing manner.

  Next, trying the suckers, big, reddish-black fellows of two pounds'weight, we found them easy to snare. They lay as if they were half dead,their bellies close to the bottom, and never moved when the loop drifteddown round their heads, thinking, no doubt, that it was but a piece ofpassing water-grass. When the noose was just behind the gills, we gavethe pole a sharp yank, and up came the fish, wrig
gling and flapping,helpless in the grip of the tightened cord.

  After we caught three of them, we spent the rest of the morning settinga deadfall at each of three pools where the otters were working. But forsome time afterward we got no otters; of all animals they are the shyestand most difficult to trap. It was not until all traces of the man scenthad died out that one was finally lured by the sucker bait, and waskilled by the fall-bar.

  As time passed, we set more and more deadfalls up and down the valley,so many that finally we could not make the round of them all in one day.One morning we would attend to those lying east of the lodge, and thenext morning visit those to the west of it. The farthest one to the westwas at least seven miles away, and for some unknown reason more furcame to it than to any of the others; we seldom visited it withoutfinding a marten or a fisher. Pitamakan called it the _nat-o-wap-ikyak-ach-is_--medicine-trap, as the words may be freely translated._Nat-o-wap-i_ really means "of the sun"--"sun-power."

  As we approached this deadfall one day, when we had taken nothing fromthe other traps except a marten that a passing fisher had maliciouslytorn to shreds, Pitamakan began the coyote prayer song, because, as hesaid, something had to be done to bring us better luck.

  We soon saw the deadfall, noticed that the bar was down, and hurriedeagerly forward to see what it held, while my partner sang louder thanever. On coming to it, we found a fine, black, fluffy-furred fisher;whereupon Pitamakan raised his hand and began chanting a prayer ofthanks to the gods.

  Meanwhile I saw, a little farther on, a trail in the snow which excitedmy interest, and I impatiently waited for him to finish his devotions tocall his attention to it.

  "Look! There's the trail of a bear!" I said, although it seemed odd tome that a bear should be wandering round in the dead of winter.

  We hurried over to it. What we saw made us stare wildly round withfright, while we quickly strung our bows. It was the trail of a man onlong, narrow web shoes--an Indian, of course, and therefore an enemy.The trail was fresh, too, apparently as fresh as our own. And but amoment before, Pitamakan had been singing at the top of his voice!