Altsheler, Joseph - [Great West 01]

by The Great Sioux Trail (lit)

  The battle that ensued was fully as terrible as that with the wolves. The bears, although far fewer than the wolves had been, were the greatest of all the American carnivora, and they resented savagely the attempt to drive them from their food, turning with

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  foaming mouths upon their assailants, who could not meet them now with bullets, but who fought with the weapons of an earlier time.

  Will plied the bow and arrow, and, when the arrows were exhausted, used a long lance. He and Xingudan were really the leaders, marshalling their hosts with such skill and effect that they gradually drove the bears away from the ponies, leaving the animals to be quieted by the women and old men, while the war- riors fought the bears. Among these men was Roka, now recovered from his wound, and using a great bow with deadly accuracy. He and Will at length drew up side by side, and the stout Indian planted an arrow deep in the side of a bear. Yet the wound was not fatal, and the animal, first biting at the arrow, then charged. Will struck with the lance so fiercely that it entered the animal's heart and, wrenched from his hands, was broken as the great beast fell.

  "Behold!" shouted Xingudan in Roka's ear, "he has saved your life even as he saved mine!"

  Not one of the bears escaped, but two of the men lost their lives in the terrible combat, and the strength of the village was reduced yet further. The two men, however, had perished nobly and the people felt tri- umphant. Will examined the bears by the numerous torchlights. He and Xingudan and Inmutanka agreed that they were not the true grizzly of the Montana or Idaho mountains, but, like the first one, much larger beasts coming out of the far north. Will judged that the largest of them all weighed a full three-quarters of a ton or more, and a most terrific creature he was,

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  with great hooked claws as hard as steel and nearly a foot in length.

  "One blow of those would destroy the stoutest war- or, Waditaka," said Xingudan.

  "Our bows and arrows and lances have saved us," said Will. "I think they've been driven out of the Arctic by the great cold, and have migrated south in search of food."

  "Then they smelled the horses and attacked them."

  "Truly so, Xingudan, and they or other wild beasts will come again. The ponies are our weakest point. The great meat-eating animals will always attack them."

  "But we must keep our ponies, Waditaka. We will need them in the spring to hunt the buffalo."

  "Of course, Xingudan, we must save the ponies."

  "How, O Waditaka?"

  The youth felt a thrill. The chief was appealing to him to show the way and he felt that he must do it. He had already the germ of an idea.

  "I think I shall have a plan tomorrow, O Xingu- dan," he said.

  When Will departed for their lodge with Inmu- tanka, Xingudan said to Roka :

  "What think you now, Roka, of Waditaka, once Wayaka, a captive youth, but now Waditaka, the brave young Sioux warrior, the adopted son of Inmu- tanka, who is the greatest curer of sickness among us?"

  "He was as brave as any, as well as the most skill- ful of all those who fought against the great beasts,"

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  replied Roka, "and you spoke truly, Xingudan, when you said the village needed him. I make no demand that the command of Heraka be carried out. But can we keep him, Xingudan? Will he not go back to his own people when the chance conies ?"

  "That I know not, Roka, but it will be many a day before he has a chance to return to them. The dis- tance is great, as you know, and we concealed from him the way we came. The knowledge of the region in which this village stands is hidden from him."

  Will's idea, as he had promised, was developed the next day. The corral for the ponies, with one side of it against the overhanging cliff, was strengthened greatly with stakes and brush, and at night fires were lighted all about it, tended by relays. He knew that wild beasts dreaded nothing so much as fire, and if any of them appeared the guards were to beat the alarm on the war drum. There were enough people in the village to make it easy for the watchers, and the fires would keep them warm.

  Xingudan expressed his full approval of the plan, and the watch was set that very night, Will, at his own request, being put in charge of it. Heavily wrapped in his buffalo coat over his deerskin suit, with two pairs of moccasins on his feet, a fur cap on his head and thick ear muffs, he walked from fire to fire and saw that they were well fed. There was no need to spare the wood, the valley having a great supply of timber.

  His assistants were small boys, old men and old women. The intelligence, activity and strength of these ancient squaws always surprised William. They

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  were terribly weazened and withered, and far from beautiful to look upon, but once having arrived at that condition they seemed able to live forever, and to take a healthy interest in life as they went along. Owing to the lack of men in the village their importance had increased also, and they liked it. Under Will's eye they worked with remarkable zeal, and a band of living light surrounded the entire corral. Other lights blazed at points about the village, as they intended to make everything safe.

  Will was chief of the watch, until about three o'clock in the morning. Often he went among the ponies and soothed them with voice and touch, for they were generally restless. Out of the darkness, well beyond the light of the flames, came growls and the noises of fierce combat. They had skinned all the bears, and also had taken away all the eatable portions of their bodies, but other beasts had come for what was left. The Indians distinguished the voices of bear, moun- tain lion and wolf. From the slopes also came fierce whines, and the old squaws, shuddering, built the fires yet higher.

  "Son of Inmutanka," said Xingudan at last to Will, "go to your lodge and sleep. You have proved anew that you are a man and worthy to belong to the great Dakota nation. The fires will be kept burning all through the night and see you, Inmutanka, that no one awakens him. Let his sleep go of its own accord to its full measure/'

  A year earlier Will would have been so much ex- cited that sleep would have been impossible to him,

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  But the primitive life he was leading had hardened all his nerves so thoroughly that he slumbered at once be- tween the buffalo robes.

  Old Inmutanka did not awaken him when the dawn came, although most of the people were already at work, curing the meat of the bears and scraping and drying the huge hides. They were also putting more brush and stakes around the great corral for the ponies, and many were already saying it was Waditaka who had saved their horses for them the night before. But the day had all the intense cold of extreme winter in the great mountains of North America. The mer- cury was a full forty degrees below zero, and the Indians who worked with the spoils had only chin, eyes and mouth exposed. Among them came old Inmutanka, very erect and strong despite his years, and full of honest pride. He thumped himself twice upon the chest, and then said in a loud, clear voice :

  "Does anyone here wish to question the merit of my son, Waditaka ? Is he not as brave as the bravest, and does he not think further ahead than any other warrior in the village?"

  Then up spoke old Xingudan and he was sincere.

  "Your words are as true as if they had been spoken by Manitou himself," he said. "The youth, Wadi- taka, the son of Inmutanka, was the greatest warrior of us all when the bears came, and his deeds stand jprst"

  Then up spoke the messenger, Roka, also.

  "It is true," he said. "I witnessed with my own eyes the great deeds of Waditaka. Our chief, Xingu-

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  dan, must be proud to have such a brave and wise young warrior in his village."

  The two ta lked later on about the matter and Roka fully agreed with Xingudan that the command of Heraka should be disregarded. Red Cloud, the great Mahpeyalute, would support them i
n it and, in any event, it was quite sure that the village itself would not allow it.

  Will did not awake until the afternoon, and then he yawned and stretched himself a minute or two be- tween the warm covers before he opened his eyes. He saw a low fire of big coals burning in the centre of the lodge, neutralizing the intensely cold air that came in where the door of the lodge was left open for a foot or more.

  He surmised from the angle of the sun's rays that the day was far advanced. Pemmican, strips of veni- son and some corn cakes lay by the edge of the fire and he knew that good old Inmutanka had left them there for him. He began to feel hungry. He would rise in a few minutes and warm the bread and meat by the fire, but he first listened to a chant that came from the outside, low at first, though swelling grad- ually. His attention was specially attracted, because he caught the sound of his own name in a recurring note. At length he made out the song, something like this :

  Lo, in the night the great bears came Our horses they would crush and devour. Mighty were they in their size and strength 313

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  And hunger fierce and terrible drove them on. Bullets we had none, only the edge of steel and bone, But the fires of Waditaka filled their souls with fear, Waditaka, the wise, the brave son of Inmutanka, Without him our herd would have been lost, and we, too.

  Waditaka, the valiant and wise, showed us the way. Young, but his arrow sings true, his lance strikes deep, Waditaka, the thoughtful, the bold, the son of Inmutanka, Proud we are that he belongs to us ano? fights for us.

  Young Clarke lay back between the buffalo covers. !The song, crude though it was, and without rhyme or metre in the Indian fashion, gave him a strange and deep thrill. It was in just such manner that the Greeks chanted the praises of some hero who had saved them from great disaster, or who had done a mighty deed against dragons. From his early read- ing came visions of Hercules and Theseus, of Perseus and Bellerophon. But he did not put himself with such champions. He was merely serving a primitive little village, carried by its primitive state farther back than that world in which the more or less legendary Greek heroes lived.

  But it was pleasant, wonderfully pleasant, to hear the chant. This was his world and to know, for a time at least, that he was first among the people, was very grateful to young ears. Listening a while he rose, dressed, warmed his food, and ate it with the appetite of a young lion.

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE DREADFUL NIGHT

  WHEN Will came out of the lodge he witnessed such a scene as one might have looked upon ten thousand years ago. The cold was bitter, but there were many fires. Vast icicles hung from the slopes of the mountains, glittering in the sun like gigantic spears. The trees were sheathed in ice, and, when the wind shook the boughs, pieces fell like silver mail. It was an icy world, narrow and enclosed, but it was a cheerful world just the same.

  The squaws were pounding the bear meat, much as the white housewife would pound a steak, but with more vigor. Grizzly or any other kind of big bear was exceedingly tough, even after treatment, but, in the last resort, the Indians would eat it, and, despite their great stores of ordinary food, Xingudan feared they would not last through the long and bitter winter now promised.

  The huge skins which had all the quality of fur were welcome. Will believed the bears were not grizzlies, and later, when he heard of the mighty Alaskan bears, he was sure of it. Great portions of the animals could not be used, and, as Xingudan knew

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  that the odor would draw the fierce carnivora at night, he ordered it all carried to a point far up the valley and dumped there. Then the night was filled with howlings as the big wolves came down again and fought and ate.

  Will listened with many a shudder as, heavily clothed and armed, he helped to keep the guard about the village and the corral, and, as he listened, he re- verted by another great stage back into the primitive. He was with his friends, those who had fought be- side him, those who cared for him, and those who looked upon him as a leader. For the present, at least, he was content. His hours were full of useful labor, of excitement, and of rewards. He knew that another of the great bearskins would be placed in the lodge that belonged to himself and Inmutanka, and that the best of the food would always be theirs if they were willing to take it.

  The most difficult of their tasks was to procure enough food for the ponies, and they were continually turning up the snow in secluded alcoves in search of it. Once the weather moderated considerably for a week, and the snow melting in vast volume freshened all the grass and foliage. Heavy and continuous rains for several days renewed much vegetation, apparently dead in this secluded valley, and the ponies, which were permitted to graze freely in the course of the day, al- though they were driven back to the corral at night, regained much of their lost flesh. The Indians also used this interval to gather and store much forage for them.

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  With the cessation of the rain however, the fierce cold returned. Everything froze up tight and fast again, and once more at night they heard the fierce howlings of the wild beasts. The fires around the corral were renewed and were never permitted to die, and it was necessary also to keep them burning con- tinually about the village. A wolf stole in between the lodges, killed and carried off a little child. He was trailed by Will, Roka, now his fast friend, and a young warrior named Pehansan, the Crane, because of his extreme height and thinness. But Pehansan's figure, despite its slenderness, was so tough that he seemed able to endure anything, and on this expedi- tion he was the leader. They tracked the wolf up the mountain side, slew it with arrows and recovered the body of the child, to which they gave proper burial, thus making sure of the immortality of its soul.

  The danger from the wild beasts remained. It was the theory of the old and wise Xingudan that the pony herd drew them. The fierce winter made the hunting bad, but the word had been passed on by wolves, mountain lions and bears that a certain valley was filled with fine, toothsome horses, little able to protect themselves, and all of the fierce meat-eaters were coming to claim their share.

  "We shall have to fight them until the spring," said the wise old chief, "and since we have neither car- tridges nor powder and lead, we must make hundreds and hundreds of arrows."

  This was hard and tedious labor, but nearly all in the village, who were able, devoted most of their

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  time to it. They used various kinds of wood, scrap- ing the shafts until they were perfectly round, and making on every one three fine grooves which kept them from warping. The arrows were of two differ- ent kinds, those for hunting and those for war. The barb of the war arrow was short, and it was not fas- tened very tightly to the shaft. When it struck the enemy, it would become detached and remain in the wound, while the shaft fell away. A cruel device, but not worse than has since been shown by highly civilized people in a universal war.

  The head of the hunting arrow was longer, more tapering and it was fastened securely. The people of the village made these in much greater numbers than the war arrows, as they certainly expected no fighting with men before the spring, and then they would procure ammunition for their rifles. The Sioux were not good marksmen at long range, but they shot their arrows with amazing swiftness. Will noted that a man holding a dozen arrows in his left hand could fire them all in as many seconds, and they could be discharged with such power that at very close range one would pass entirely through the body of a buffalo.

  While Will did not learn to shoot the arrows as fast as the Indians, he was soon a better marksman at long range than anybody else in the village. Then Xingudan gave him the most beautiful bow he had ever seen. It was made of pieces of elkhorn that had been wrapped minutely and as tightly as possible with the fresh intestines of a deer. When the intes-

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  tines dried the bow became to all purposes a single piece of p
owerful horn, yet with the flexibility and elasticity that one horn did not have. It was unbreak- able, it did not suffer from weather, and it had among the Sioux the same value that a jewel of great price has among white people. Will knew that old Xingudan considered it a full equivalent for his repeating rifle, revolver and field glasses that the old chief kept in his lodge.

  Will and the Crane, otherwise Pehansan, formed a warm friendship, and he found a similar friend in Roka, the stalwart warrior who had come with the order for his death by torture. Soon after he re- ceived the gift of the great bow the three decided on a hunting expedition toward the upper end of the valley, all traveling on snowshoes.

  "Beware of the wild beasts, my son," said Inmu- tanka.

  "We have heard nothing of them for a week past," said Will.

  "The greater reason to expect them, because the word has been sent over a thousand miles of snow fi elds that we are here to be eaten. I know you are brave, watchful and quick, but take many arrows and see that Roka and Pehansan do the same."

  Will was gay and light of heart, but he obeyed the injunction of Inmutanka and filled the quiver. He saw that Roka and Pehansan had an abundance, also, and the three, wrapped in furs, departed on their snowshoes. The Indians had not gone much toward the upper end of the valley. The slopes were less