Jack Among the Indians; Or, A Boy's Summer on the Buffalo Plains

by George Bird Grinnell

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  A MYSTERY OF THE PRAIRIE.

  Two or three days after Fox Eye's accident, the camp moved again, backto the little creek near the Sweet Grass Hills, which they had left onlya few days before. Here there were but few buffalo, and another move wasmade, still further south, to a stream running into the Marias River.After two or three short moves down this creek, buffalo were again foundplenty, and several successful chases were made. As the indicationsseemed to be that the buffalo were more plenty east of the Marias, thecamp turned in that direction and moved on toward the Missouri River.

  By this time, great stores of food had been accumulated by the Indians.In every lodge were piled up parfleches of choice dried meat and backfat and tongues. Many sacks of pemmican had been made, and Jack greatlyenjoyed seeing the old women at work, preparing this food. Every eveningthere was feasting in the camp. Men invited their friends to eat withthem. Young people held dances, sometimes some of the societies heldtheir dances. Everybody was good natured, laughing, happy.

  Hugh and Jack were often invited to feast by some of Hugh's friends, andalways accepted; and usually their hosts, perhaps on the suggestion ofHugh, or perhaps of Pis'kun Monroe, invited Joe to these feasts, ascompany for Jack. So it was that Joe, who under ordinary circumstanceswould have been treated only as a boy who had never done anything, andwas as yet of no importance, came, through Jack's friendship, to beregarded as a young man of promise, and to stand in the publicestimation, very high among the young men of the camp. Joe understoodperfectly, why it was that he received this consideration, and sometimesused to talk to Jack about it, and to tell him that if it had not beenfor Hugh and himself, none of these honours, that he was now receiving,would have come to him.

  Hugh, Jack and Joe took part in all the buffalo chases that were made,and on one of these, Jack rode his new horse and carried only his bowand arrows and his knife. On this chase he killed four cows which wereafterwards identified by the private mark which his arrows bore, as didthose of every other man in the camp. In this chase he let Joe ridePawnee, and Joe killed six cows, for of course he was much moreaccustomed to the use of the bow, than was Jack. Often during thesedays, Jack and Joe rode out together, both bareback, and carrying theirbows and several times coming upon single buffalo, they succeeded inkilling them and bringing them into the camp. Several times, too, theycame upon little herds of buffalo feeding or lying on the prairie, inplaces where it was possible to creep up very close to them, and Jack,who by this time had killed enough buffalo so that the novelty had wornoff, persuaded Joe to creep up near the great beasts, and to lie thereand watch them.

  This was an amusement in which at first Joe scarcely sympathized. Tohim a buffalo was only so much food, and yet after they had done thisonce or twice, and had spent hours watching old cows lying there,chewing their cud while the yellow calves played about them, or at othertimes, slowly feeding along some little sag between two hills, or again,steadily travelling along with ponderous tread and swinging heads andbeards sweeping the ground, Joe became as much interested in the studyof the ways of these great beasts as was his white companion. Oftenmingled with a little group of buffalo would be a herd of antelope,feeding perfectly at home with their huge companions, and perhaps, ifthese started to walk in any direction, keeping along with them as if apart of the herd. Once a group of buffalo and antelope passed so closeto the boys, lying on the hilltop, that Jack distinctly saw the nostrilsof the nearest antelope move and twitch as it walked by, while the greatbull near which it was, looked to the boy almost like a mountain.

  One day, when the camp was near the Missouri River, Jack and Joe hadridden out, Jack carrying his rifle and Joe his bow, over to where theBad Lands break away above the river. Far below them they could see thestream winding about among the yellow verdureless bluffs, which weregashed in all directions with ravines and canyons, and showed a curiousmingling of colours of red and gray and green and brown and yellow. Nearwhere they sat on their horses, a long point of level prairie stretchedout toward the stream, and Jack proposed that they leave their horses inthe hollow near where they were, and should walk out to the edge of theprairie and look over. He wanted to get as nearly above the stream as hecould. He did not realise that several miles of broken Bad Lands laybetween the point of prairie and the river.

  They walked out to the point and stood there looking down. The strangescene had a fascination for Jack, who had never seen Bad Lands on sogreat a scale as this. As he sat there looking at the scene andwondering, Joe rose to his feet and walking a few yards southwards,looked over the bluff there, and then turning, called in a low voice toJack. When he came up and followed Joe's glance, he saw down below themon the bluff, a single buffalo slowly working its way up the steephillside, evidently coming from the river below. The height of the bluffwas great, and the buffalo seemed to find it a hard climb. He wouldstick his toes into the soil and scramble half a dozen yards and thenstop to rest. Then he would ascend a few yards more and again stop.

  The boys lay on the edge of the bank and watched the bull slowly clambertoward them, and at length it reached the prairie only a few yards fromwhere they were, and stopping with a grunt, stood there panting. Theylay perfectly still and watched it, both feeling a little nervous as towhich way the bull might turn. Joe whispered to Jack, "Look out, myfriend, do not move, lie perfectly still. If he sees us he may rush uponus and kill us." For several moments they lay there and watched, and atlast the buffalo slowly moved away and disappeared over a low hill. Thenthey sat up, and Jack said to Joe, "Well, I'm mighty glad he's gone, Itell you, he looked to me big and terrible. Of course, I suppose Imight have killed him if he had turned toward us, but I was mighty gladwhen I saw him go the other way. Weren't you, Joe?"

  "You bet I was," said Joe. "I was scared. Of course if he had cometoward us you might have killed him, but I couldn't have done anythingwith my arrows; if he had come straight at us I'd have had to jump rightover the side of the bluff."

  "Yes," said Jack, "I expect that's all we could have done. I guess wecould have dodged him there, but I'm glad we didn't have to try it."

  The boys rose to their feet and went to the place where the buffalo hadcome up on the prairie, and looking down over the almost vertical cliff,they wondered how such a great and heavy beast could ever have climbedup.

  "I tell you," said Jack, "they must be strong. Just think of that biganimal climbing up the steep face of that bluff. I should have thoughthe'd have fallen over backward and rolled down every time he tried totake a step. It's wonderful."

  "Oh!" said Joe, "I tell you a buffalo is a great, powerful beast. He'sstrong and he never gets tired, and he's big, and then besides all thathe has got mysterious power. Maybe you don't believe that, but all theold men will tell you it's so."

  "Well," said Jack, "I've heard something about that from Hugh, but ofcourse I don't know anything except what I've been told; but Hugh saysthat all the Indians believe the buffalo has this power."

  "Well," said Joe, "it's so; he has."

  They set out to return to their horses, walking along over the prairienear where it broke off into the deep ravines running toward the river.As they were crossing one of the little side gullies that ran into oneof these, Jack's eye was caught by an odd sparkle in the sand on thefloor of the ravine, and looking a second time, he saw something thatdid not shine quite like a bit of gravel. He stepped toward it and sawsticking out of the sand in the wash, a bit of yellow metal, andstooping down, pulled from the soil what he took at first to be a usedcartridge shell. In a moment he saw that it was not this, and callingJoe to him, said, "What can this be, Joe? I thought it was an oldcartridge shell, but it isn't, it looks like a little brass whistle withthe mouth part gone. You see this hole through the metal at the bottom,there has been a string through that to hold it by." Joe looked at thepiece of metal which was a short tube closed at one end, and with aprojection at that end, which, as Jack said, had a hole in it and hadevidently served to tie the tube to
something. "Why," said he, "that's apowder charger. I never saw one made of brass before, but I've seen lotsmade of horn and tin and copper. You fill this charger with powder fromyour horn, and empty it into your gun; that's the way you measure thecharge."

  "Oh yes," said Jack, "I've heard of that, but I never saw one before,but look here," he added, "here is something scratched on it. What isit?" And he rubbed the dust away with his finger and polished the metalon his sleeve. "Why! it's 'B. L.,' those must be the initials of the manwho owned it; but I wonder how it came to be here. I suppose the manwas hunting or travelling about, and the string broke and he lost it,and then finally it got washed into the gulch here."

  "Yes," said Joe, "most likely that was it."

  Jack put the charger in his pocket, and they went on; but hardly hadthey come out of the gully, when Joe stopped, and stooping down tookhold of something at his feet. "Hold on, Jack," he said, "here issomething more," and turning, Jack saw Joe stooping over an old piece ofleather lying on the prairie. Joe took hold of the leather to lift it,but when he pulled at it, it slipped through his fingers. "Why, it'sstuck fast," he said; and taking a hold of it again, he held it tighterand pulled, and the leather began to tear, and as it tore, someparticles that looked like yellow gravel, escaped from the rent, andslipped down on the prairie.

  "That's queer," said Jack, and both boys went down on their knees besideit. Jack picked up some of the grains that had escaped, and looked atthem. They were very heavy and looked like dull brass. Poking hisfingers through the rent in the leather, Joe felt about and poked out alot more of the gravel, while Jack kept gathering it up in his hand andlooking at it. Suddenly Jack's jaw dropped, and he looked at Joe withwide open eyes, while a frightened expression came on his face. "Joe,"he said in a whisper, "do you know, I believe this is gold."

  "You're crazy;" said Joe. "You must be very crazy. Who would leave goldlying out here on the prairie? I never heard of anything like that."

  "But, Joe," said Jack, "feel how heavy it is, it must be gold. Nobodywould carry brass around in a buckskin package and leave it here on theprairie any more than they would gold. Somebody must have beentravelling here and lost this off his horse. This must be worth a lot ofmoney. Now let's gather it up carefully and take it into camp and showit to Hugh, and see what he says. He'll know, dead sure."

  The boys did not know how to get this on their horses without losing anyof it. Evidently this old buckskin sack had lain there so long, that itwas rotten and would not hold together. With their knives they dugcarefully about the sack and as they dug, they found that it was in partburied in the soil, so that there was more of it below the surface ofthe prairie than above. Jack took off his hat and placed in it all thegrains that they could gather up, and then digging deeply around thesack, they at length got below it.

  "Now, Joe," said Jack, "there's only one thing to do that I can thinkof, to carry this stuff in the camp. We've got to have something that'sstrong and something that has no holes in it, so that none of the dustcan get out; and the only thing of that kind that we have with us, isone of your leggings. Take off your leggings and we'll tie up the end ofone of them and slip this bag and the dirt into the other end, and thentie that up and we can put it across a horse."

  They did this, but it was not easy to do. In the first place the lump ofdirt which held the sack was large, heavy and very frail, so that whenthey tried to lift it, it looked as if it would break in two. Insteadof lifting it, therefore, they put the legging down on the ground, andwhile they lifted the lump of earth little by little, they slipped theside of the legging under it, until the whole mass was within thebuckskin covering. Then they tied each end of the legging firmly withbuckskin strings, and started to put it on the horse. It was very heavy.Joe said it weighed as much as half a sack of flour, that is, fiftypounds.

  Both boys were in a high state of excitement and talked to each other inwhispers, and kept looking guiltily over their shoulders in alldirections, as if they were committing some crime. No doubt their notionwas, that some one else might appear on the scene and lay claim to aportion of this treasure that they had found. Presently they mounted andset out for the camp, Jack keeping one hand behind him on the preciousbundle that was tied behind his saddle, while Joe rode with his horse'shead at Jack's knee, and kept his eyes fixed on the load.

  "How much do you suppose there is, Joe?" said Jack.

  "Why, I don't know," said Joe; "must be a hundred dollars worth of it,if it's gold."

  "A hundred dollars! Pooh, Joe, you don't know anything," was the reply."You said it weighed fifty pounds, and if it weighs as much as that,there must be thousands of dollars worth."

  "My!" said Joe, "is there as much as that? I know what I'll do."

  "What?" said Jack.

  "I'll get me a good gun," replied Joe, "that's all I want, a good gun,and maybe a good buffalo horse."

  "Why," said Jack, "if that's gold you can buy yourself all the guns andall the horses you want, and a lodge for yourself and still have plentyleft."

  "What'll you do, Jack, with yours?" said Joe.

  "Oh, I don't know," said Jack, "I'd like to buy a lot of nice furs androbes to take home, but I expect we've got trade stuff enough to buythose things with, maybe I'll just take it home as it is. But hold on,"he said, as a sudden thought struck him. "This doesn't belong to me;this is yours, you found it."

  "No I didn't," said Joe, "we both found it together, and anyhow if youhadn't been along, I'd have just left it there; I wouldn't have carrieda lot of yellow sand into the camp. I never saw anything like thisbefore, and I'd a-thought it was just some kind of queer gravel. We havebeen partners right along, almost since you came into the camp, andwe've got to be partners now."

  "Well," said Jack, "we'll see what Hugh says about it. After all maybeit isn't anything. I've heard my uncle talk about fool's gold, and oneday when we were coming up, I picked up apiece of yellow heavy stufflike this and asked Hugh what it was, and he told me some queer namethat I can't remember, and then said some folks called it fool's gold,and he cracked it on the axe and it broke into little pieces. It lookedsomething like this stuff we've got only the edges were sharp and notround like this, and it was bright and shiny too, and not dull, the waythis is."

  "Oh, I hope that this _is_ gold, it will be great."

  When they reached camp, they unsaddled and carefully carried theirbundle into Pis'kun's lodge. Hugh was not there, but the boys were tooimpatient to wait for him long, and after a few moments, Jack left Joeon guard over the bundle, while he started out through the camp to findHugh. Soon he came upon him, sitting in the shade of the lodges, smokingand talking with Last Bull and another old man, and going up to him withan air of much mystery, he asked him if he wouldn't come to the lodge.Hugh rose and accompanied him, looking at him meanwhile, with anexpression of amused curiosity, for the boy was evidently big with somesecret which he was anxious to reveal.

  When they were seated in the lodge, the boys began to untie theirbundle, and while doing so, told Hugh the story of their find. As theytalked, his interest increased, and before the contents of the legginghad been turned out into the pan borrowed from Pis'kun's wife, he was asmuch excited as the boys themselves. The legging was lifted up andslowly the mass of dirt mingled with yellow grains slipped out into thepan, and the moment that Hugh saw it he said, "By the Lord, boys, you'vesurely struck it." He took up one of the larger grains, bit it, tried itwith his knife and then whispered impressively, "It's gold." For an houror two all three were busy cleaning the grass, the soil and bits ofrotten buckskin from among the yellow grains, which half filled the pan.When this was done, Hugh lifted it from the ground, and after weighingit carefully in his hand, said, "Boys, there must be twenty-five poundsof this dust. I wouldn't be surprised if there was five or six thousanddollars right here in that pan."

  "My," said Jack, "that's an awful lot of money."

  "Yes," said Hugh, "that's a lot of money. But how did it get there?That's what I want to know. We w
ill have to go there to-morrow and lookthe ground over right carefully; somebody must have dropped that sackthere, right on the prairie. Didn't you see nothing else there?"

  "No," said Jack, "nothing; it was just lying there half covered up bythe dirt and the grass, and Joe walked right over it before he saw it."

  "Hold on, Jack," said Joe, "show White Bull that powder charger."

  "That's so," said Jack, and he fished the tube out of his pocket.

  Hugh looked at it carefully from all sides and pondered. After he hadthought a little while, he said, "Look here boys, this is queer. I haveseen that powder charger before, and I know the man that made it.'B. L.,' that's Baptiste Lajeunesse, he was one of the old time trappersand I was in Benton when he made that charger. That's gold too. It wasmore than thirty years ago. Bat had just come in from the mountains witha big lot of furs, and sold them and got his money, and had started outto have a good time. Just before he got into the Post though, he hadlost his charger. It was one, made him long before, out of a piece ofmountain sheep's horn, by a great friend, and he thought the world ofit. He kept talking all the time about that charger, and when he beganto spend his money and to drink, he talked about it more and more. Now,Bat was a pretty handy man with tools, and when he was a boy, he hadbeen blacksmith at the Hudson Bay Co., and that afternoon, when he waspretty drunk, as he was going along the street, he suddenly stopped andran into the blacksmith shop and took a hammer and fished a twentydollar gold piece out of his pocket, and began to hammer it out on theanvil, and before any of us knew what he was after, he had made himselfthis charger and scratched his initials on it, and tied it with a stringto his shirt in front, where he used to carry his old charger when hewas in town. A few days after that, after Bat had spent all his money,he started off again into the mountains, and I have never seen him fromthat day to this.

  "Now it would be mighty curious," the old man went on, "if there was anyconnection between that charger and this sack of dust. I don't see howthere could be, and I don't see how we are likely to find out anythingabout it; but anyhow, we'll go back there to-morrow and see."

  Hugh covered the pan of gold with some robes, and told Jack and Joe toremain in the lodge while he went out. Half an hour later, he returnedwith a heavy double sack of buckskin into which the gold was poured, andthis sack was put in a partly empty sack of flour, the flour beingpacked around the gold and on top of it, so that there seemed to benothing but flour in the sack, which was then placed under the otherproperty belonging to Hugh and Jack, between their beds.