CHAPTER X
"Don't you move!" Pitamakan exclaimed.
He spoke just in time, for I was on the point of springing up andrunning for the timber. The game--they were mule-deer, which are notfleet runners, like the white-tail--came bouncing awkwardly toward us,while the Indians gained on them perceptibly. Never before had I feltthat I was a giant; but as I sat there in the short grass of the openprairie, I felt as if my body was actually towering into the sky. Iinstinctively tried to make myself of smaller size. All my musclesquivered 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 deerwill soon turn. Our one chance is to sit motionless. They haven't seenus yet."
The deer came steadily toward us, jumping awkwardly and high. They werenow less than four hundred yards away, and although the wind wasincreasing, they gave no sign of having scented us.
"They must turn soon," Pitamakan said. "But if they don't, and you seethat the Indians are coming for us, string your bow. Let us fight ourbest 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 themswift 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 tobe staring straight at us instead of at the animals.
I had started to reach for my bow and arrows, which lay on the groundbeside me, when the deer did turn, suddenly and sharply to the right.The pursuers, turning also, almost at the same time, gainedconsiderably on them. I realized that we had not been discovered.
The leading hunter now raised his gun and fired. The hornless old buckat the head of the band sharply shook his head, and holding it askew asif the bullet had stung it, swerved to the right again, directly awayfrom us. The herd followed him, while the hunters again made a short cuttoward them and began shooting. Their backs were now to us.
"Run! Run for the timber!" my partner commanded; and grabbing my bow andarrows, I followed him, faster, probably, than I had ever run before. Itwas a hundred yards or more to the timber. As we neared it, I began tohope that we should get into its shelter unseen. Behind us the hunterskept shooting at the deer, but neither of us took time to look backuntil 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 knewthat they had discovered us. We looked, and saw that they were comingour way as fast as their horses could lope. And how they did yell! Therewas menace in those shrill staccato yelps.
"We must leave the furs. Just take your snowshoes and come on," saidPitamakan, and I grabbed them up and followed him.
It was only a few yards back in the timber to the snow-line. Uponreaching it, I threw down my shoes, stuck my toes into the loops, andwas starting on without fastening the ankle-thongs, when my partnerordered me to tie them properly. It seemed to me that my fingers hadnever been so clumsy.
We stepped up on the snow, and found that the crust was still strongenough to bear our weight, although it cracked and gave slightly wherethe centre of the poor webbing sagged under our feet. At the edge of theprairie the timber was scattering; but back a short distance there wereseveral dense thickets, and back of them again was the line of theheavy pine forest. We made for the nearest thicket, while the yells ofthe 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 amomentary stop in the war-cries as they loudly disputed over thepossession of them. Then, abandoning their horses, they began shootingat us as they advanced into the snow, through which they broke andfloundered at almost every step.
The advantage was now all with us, provided we were not hit. Once Istopped behind a tree for an instant and looked back. Three of the menhad 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 bestto advance over the crust, and had our plight not been so desperate, Ishould have laughed to see them. They stepped gingerly, teetering alongwith open mouths and arms outspread, and sometimes the crust wouldbear their weight for three or four paces, and so increase theirconfidence that they would quicken their speed, only to break throughand sink waist-deep.
I GRABBED THEM UP AND FOLLOWED HIM]
I pushed a flap of my old capote out from the tree as far as I couldwith the bow, in the hope of drawing their fire; but, finding that theywere not to be caught by any such ruse, I hurried on. Then severalbullets came so close to me that I could feel the wind from them; onestruck a tree which I was passing, and flicked off bits of bark, whichstung my left cheek and cut the lobe of my left ear. When the enemy sawme raise my hand to my face, they yelled with triumph, and Pitamakanturned 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 mypartner give a little cry of pain; but he did not flinch, and continuedon as rapidly as before. When I came where he had been, however, I sawthat his trail was bloody, and I feared the worst, for I well knew thateven with a death-wound he would keep on bravely to the very end. Therest of the run to the thicket was like some terrible dream to me, for Iexpected that every step he made would be his last. But finally hepassed into the screen of young evergreens, and a moment later I wasbeside him, asking how badly he was hurt.
"It is only a flesh-wound here," he answered, gripping the inner part ofhis left thigh. "Come on, we mustn't stop."
As the enemy could no longer see us, we made our way to the line of bigtimber without fear of their bullets. They gave a few last yells as wewent into the thicket, and shouted some words at us, which of course wecould not understand. And then all was still.
Without a word, Pitamakan went on and on up the steep mountain-side, andI sadly followed him. Soon, coming to an opening in the timber, westepped 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. Soonthey dismounted and began skinning two that they had killed. We removedour snowshoes and sat down on them. Pitamakan let down his legging andwashed his wound with snow; the bullet had split open the skin for alength of several inches, but fortunately, had not torn the muscles. Assoon as the wound was washed and dry, I went over to a balsam fir andgathered the contents of three or four blisters, which he smeared allover the raw place. In a few minutes he said that the pungent, stickystuff had stopped the burning of the wound.
We were two sad boys that morning. The loss of the furs, for which wehad worked so hard all winter, was not easy to bear. Every few minutesPitamakan would cry out to his gods to punish the thieves, and my heartwas as sore against them as his. With the fur packs we had lost also ourfire-drill and socket piece.
"But that doesn't matter," Pitamakan said. "We have good bows and canmake a drill at any time. Perhaps we shall never again have any use forone!"
"How so? Are we never to eat again? Shall we not need fire of nights tokeep us warm?" I asked.
"Maybe we shall and maybe not," Pitamakan replied. "It is not likelythat those hunters will go home without trying to take our scalps withthem; we'll soon know about that."
We watched the men in silence for some little time. Four of them wereround one deer, and three were at work skinning the other. Soon,however, one man left each group and began cutting willows. Soonafterward we saw that those remaining had got the deer hides off andwere cutting them into strips.
"I thought that they would do that," said my partner. "They are going tomake snowshoes and follow us. Hurry now, and fasten on your shoes!"
I did as I was told and asked no questions. Pitamakan limped badly whenhe started off, but made light of his lameness and insisted that he feltno pain. By this time the sun was fast weakening the crust; in a shorttime neither we nor our enemy would be able to travel, and I t
old mypartner that while they were making their shoes, we ought to get so farahead that they never would be able to overtake us.
"They are seven, we only two," he said. "They will break trail by turnswhen the snow gets soft. Our chance to escape is to get back to the dryprairie while they are climbing the mountain on our trail."
That was a plan that had never entered my head, but I instantly saw itspossibilities. Left to my own resources, I should only have struggled onand on into the mountains, eventually to be captured.
For an hour or more, just as long as the crust would hold, we kept alongthe side of the mountain parallel with the river; then, when the crustat last broke with us at every step, we took off our snowshoes andfloundered down the tremendously steep slope to the stream, and turningwith it, walked and ran along the gravelly and sandy shore.
So, not later than mid-afternoon, we came again to the foot of themountain, 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 ofthe deer chase.
"_I-kit-si-kum! Sap-un-is-tsim!_" (Seven! The whole number!) Iexclaimed. The horses of the enemy were picketed out there and quietlygrazing, but not one of the hunters was to be seen. It seemed too goodto be true.
We stood still for some time, while we searched the prairie and themountain-side for sign of the enemy.
"They seem all to have taken our trail," said Pitamakan, at last, "andmaybe 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 theriver a little farther, then swing round and sneak into the grove fromthe other side."
We hurried on in the river-bottom for half a mile, and then swung outacross 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 throughit so slowly that a red squirrel digging in the needle-covered earthnear by never noted our passing. There was not more than an acre of theyoung trees, and they covered a space twice as long as wide, so we wereable to see every foot of it as we passed along. When we were nearingthe farther end, a coyote gave us a terrible scare; as he rose up behinda thin screen of low boughs, we could not see at first just what itwas.
I have heard of people turning cold from fear; maybe they do, but feardoes not affect me in that way. A flash of heat swept through me; mymouth grew dry. My sense of being perfectly helpless, my expectationthat a bullet would come tearing into me, was something that I shallnever forget.
This time the suspense was short; the coyote walked boldly off in thedirection 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 onas stealthily as before. But when we came to the edge of the grove, wesaw 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 ofwillow cuttings and short strips of deer hide where the hunters had madetheir snowshoes. The saddles were all home-made, but better than none.We each selected one and the best of the blankets, and began saddlingthe two most sturdy and swift-looking of the seven animals. That done,we turned the remaining five loose, after removing their lariats andthrowing them away. Then we got into the saddle and started to gather upthe loose stock, when I suddenly thought of something that we hadentirely forgotten in our excitement.
"Pitamakan! Our furs! Where can they be?" I asked.
"There! There!" he answered, pointing to where the other deer carcasslay.
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 andpicking them up; then, driving the other horses ahead of us, we rodeaway 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 thesoft snow, they were waiting for the night freeze, to enable them to goon.
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, hardtrail that led, no doubt, directly to the camp which they had come fromin the morning. Of course they were willing to be driven back to theirmates! And now, as we pushed along this highway, one and another of thembegan to nicker, a sure sign that the camp was not far distant.
There were only three or four hundred yards of the timber, and thenanother big prairie; and at the farther end of this, a couple of milesaway, smoke was rising from another patch of timber, near which manyhorses were grazing.
"There! There is the camp of the enemy!" Pitamakan cried. "Already theymay 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 towardtheir mates, and it required hard riding to head them off and turn themback. And then when we did accomplish it, they were very restless; itwas only by the greatest vigilance that we kept them from breaking back.
While the sun slowly sank toward the horizon, we waited in suspense, forthere was a chance that the party of seven, or some other party, mightappear at any moment. The thought that, after our great success of theday, we might lose everything, and our lives also, kept us keyed up toan intense pitch of excitement.
Toward sunset there was a commotion among the horse herds at the fartherend of the prairie, and two riders came loping straight toward us. Atfirst we were not much alarmed, for we thought that they were onlylooking for some stray animal from the bands; but they kept comingstraight on, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and it wassoon plain, either that they had seen us and were going to have a lookat our outfit, or that they were going to take the trail through thetimber, in search, probably, of the missing hunters whose horses we hadrounded up. There was but one thing for us to do--hustle the animals asfar from the trail as possible; and going at it in a whirl ofexcitement, we hissed at them, flicked them with our bridle-ropes, andstruck them with dead limbs that we snatched from the trees.
Never were horses so obstinate; they simply ducked their heads to themissiles and milled round and round among the trees and underbrush. Wehad got them no more than a bow-shot away from the trail, when, lookingout into the open, we saw that the riders had almost reached the thinbelt 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 noseand one ear.
We could plainly hear now the thud of the oncoming horses. If one of theseven animals we had should nicker, we were lost. Presently the tworiders entered the timber, and we could see them plainly as they spedalong the trail. Tall, heavy men they were, with long, flying hair andgrim faces. Each carried a long gun.
When they came in sight, my animal pricked up his ears and began toprance and toss his head, but I hung to him desperately, although I washoisted more than once clear off the ground. As I swung and bobbed inthe air, I got flashing glimpses of the enemy, of Pitamakan strugglingwith 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 ofthem did!
The two men passed swiftly along the trail out of sight, and the beatof their horses' hoofs died slowly away. Then once more we took hope.
The sun was down and darkness was stealing over the land. Faint fromthis last narrow escape, we got into the saddle once more, and leavingthe loose stock to stray whither they would, rode out into the open andtook a course down the prairie that would leave the big camp far to ourright. Passing it a little later, we could see the dim, yellow glow ofthe lodge fires, and hear the peopl
e singing, and the dogs barking nowand then in answer to the mocking yelps of the coyotes.
We traveled on through the night in a partly timbered country, and, byGod's mercy, safely forded some streams that were raging springtorrents. It was between midnight and dawn that we finally gave out,and, picketing our animals, lay down and slept. But the first peep ofthe 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 theedge of a sloping plain, we saw the big lake of the Flatheads. Pitamakanknew the place at once.
"Down there by the shore was the big camp the time we were here," hesaid, "and over there by the side of that little river runs the trail tobuffalo land."
We came to it a little later, a broad, well-worn trail that had beenused for countless years for summer travel by the mountain tribes. Therewere 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 drymeat, while they greedily cropped the tender spring grass.
We did not remain there long. Behind us stretched the trail of ourhorses, plain enough in the young green grass, a trail that could beeasily followed from where we had first taken the animals. We went onall through the afternoon eastward into the mountains. Here themountains were low, and in the still lower pass there was no snow toblock us. Indeed, Two Medicine Pass is so low that you cannot tell whenyou 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 farhorizon; and at sight of them we both shouted, and Pitamakan gave thanksto his gods. Down at the foot of the mountains we saw a little laterfour buffalo bulls, and gave greeting to them as if they were ourbrothers. But not appreciating our feelings, they ran lumbering away.
Two days afterward we came to the edge of the hill overlooking FortBenton and the Missouri, our stream of streams. The sight of it, and ofour own people walking here and there outside the fort and along theriver, 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 Indianboy, hunting horses, met us while we were yet some distance out, gaveone look at our faces, and fled straight to the Blackfeet camp by thefort.
The people instantly poured out of the lodges and came running to greetus. Surrounded by several hundred of them, all talking at once andasking a thousand questions, we rode into the great courtyard. There,foremost of the company folk who came out to see what was the cause ofall the noise, were my uncle and his wife.
They fairly tore me from my horse, smothered and crushed me with kissesand embraces, and were for leading me straight to our quarters; but Iwould not budge an inch until I had secured my precious pack of fursfrom the saddle and had given the worn animal into the keeping of one ofPitamakan's relatives.
By that time the factor himself had come from his office, and I had thenand there to tell the story of our winter and our hardships in the greatmountains. How the people hung upon my words, how they applauded andcheered! Without doubt those were the proudest moments of my life. For amere boy to hold those seasoned old voyageurs and plainsmen spellboundwas something of a feat, you may be sure.
But at last it was all over, and once more I entered our little houseand sat down on my own soft couch of buffalo-robes. As the evening waschilly, a cheerful fire was blazing in the hearth. Tsis-tsak-ki bustledround, and while cooking the supper, managed to get out clean clothesfor me, and get ready a tub of water, soap, and towels. Never before hadI seen my Uncle Wesley so excited; he could not sit still. Every fewmoments he would come over and pinch my arm, or slap me on my back, justto 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 nomore.
THE END
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