Rising Wolf the White Blackfoot Part 3

I thought that when near the top of the ridge we would dismount, go on a few steps and cautiously rise up and shoot at the nearest of the buffaloes. But Red Crow never slackened the speed of his horse and I was obliged to follow his lead. Upon reaching the ridge top we saw the great herd resting close under us on the slope, some lying down, others apparently asleep where they stood. But they saw us as soon as we saw them, and away they went, we after them as fast as our eager horses could run.

I had never thought that a horse could be so keen for the chase. Mine just took the bit in his teeth and carried me where he willed. We were soon right at the edge of the frightened herd. I saw Red Crow, some thirty or forty yards ahead of me, ride close up to the right side of an animal and fire an arrow into it, just back of the ribs, and go on without giving it further attention. And then I realized that my horse had brought me close to one of the huge, s.h.a.ggy-headed, sharp-horned animals, and I poked my gun out and fired, and saw blood almost instantly begin to gush from its nostrils. It made a few more leaps and stopped and fell, and I tried to stop my horse beside it as I shouted, "I have killed a buffalo! I have killed a buffalo!"

But I could not check up the horse, or even turn him, try as I would; a few jumps more and he had me up beside another animal. Then I wished that my pistols were in my belt, instead of in my traveling-kit. I poured a charge of powder from the horn into my hand, but spilled it all before I could get it to the muzzle of my gun. I tried again with the same result. I was not used to loading a gun when riding a horse at its top speed. I gave up the attempt and watched Red Crow, still ahead, and the huge animals thundering along on either side of me. Clumsily built though they were, with deep chest, high hump on the shoulders, and cat hammed, they were far swifter runners than any horse, except for the first few hundred yards of the start. The horse soon tired; they could keep up their killing pace for hours, when frightened. After a half-mile of the chase Red Crow dropped out of it, and I managed to turn my horse with his and start back over the ground that we had come. Ahead of us lay three dead buffaloes, and quite near one was standing humped up, head down, badly wounded. It suddenly dropped and was dead when we rode up to it. I rode on to the one I had killed, eager to examine it, and Red Crow followed me. As we approached it he laughed and gave me to understand that it was an old bull, and therefore no good, its meat too tough to eat, and he pointed to his three, two young cows and a yearling bull, as good, fat meat.

I felt sorry that I had uselessly killed the huge animal. I got down from my horse and examined it. Its ma.s.sive, sharp-horned, s.h.a.ggy, and bewhiskered head; its long knee hair, encircling the legs like pantalettes, and the great hump on its shoulders were all very odd. In order to get some idea of its height I lay down on its side, my feet even with its fore feet. Then I reached up and found that I could nowhere near touch the top of its hump. It was between six and seven feet in height!

"One part of it is good," Red Crow signed to me, and got off his horse and skinned down the bull's lower jaw, and pulled out and back the tongue through the opening, cut it off at the base, and handed it to me.

I had it that night for my supper, well roasted over the coals, and thought it the best meat I had ever tasted.

I had been wondering how, with nothing but a knife, the hunters managed to butcher such large animals as the buffaloes were. Red Crow now showed me how it was done. We went to the first of his kills, and after withdrawing the arrow, wiping it clean with a wisp of gra.s.s, and replacing it in the quiver, he twisted the cow's head sharply around beside the body, the horns sticking into the ground holding it in place.

He then grasped the under foreleg by the ankle, and using it as a lever gave a quick heave. Lo, the great body rolled up on its back and remained there propped against the sideways turned head! It was simple enough. He now cut the hide from tail to neck along the belly, and from that incision down each leg, and then, I helping in the skinning, we soon had the bare carca.s.s lying upon its spread-out hide. Then off came the legs, next the carca.s.s was turned upon its side, an incision was made all along the base of the hump, and it was broken off by hammering the ends of the hump, or dorsal ribs, with a joint of a leg cut off at the knee. Lastly, with a knife and the blows of the leg joint, the ribs were taken off in two sections, and nothing remained upon the hide but a portion of the backbone and the entrails. These we rolled off the hide and the job was done, except tying the portions two by two with strands of the hide, so that they would balance one another on the pack horse.

We had all three animals butchered before the moving camp came up. Then Lone Walker's outfit left the line and came out to us, his head wife supervised the packing of the meat, and we were soon on our way again.

I had had my first buffalo hunt. But I did not know that the buffaloes were to be my staff of life, my food, my shelter, and my clothing, so to speak, for nearly seventy years, until, in fact, they were to be exterminated in the early eighties!

Late in the afternoon of our seventh day out from the fort we went into camp at the junction of two beautiful, clear mountain streams, as I afterward learned, the Belly River, and Old Man's River. The former was so named on account of the broad bend it makes in its course, and the latter because it is believed that Old Man, when making the world, tarried long in the mountains at its head and gambled with Red Old Man, another G.o.d. On a mountain-side there is still to be seen a long, smooth furrow in the rock formation, and at the foot of it several huge stone b.a.l.l.s which the G.o.ds rolled along it at the goal.

The timber along these streams was alive with deer and elk, and from the plains countless herds of buffaloes and antelopes came swarming to them morning and evening to drink. The chiefs decreed that we should camp there for some days for hunting and drying meat, and with Red Crow for my companion I had great sport, killing several of each kind of game. We would ride out in the morning, followed by Red Crow's sister, Su-yi-kai-yi-ah-ki, or Mink Woman, riding a gentle horse and leading a couple of pack horses for bringing in the meat. Of course hundreds of hunters went out each day, but by picketing each evening the horses we were to use next day, and starting very early in the morning, we got a long start of most of them and generally had all the meat we could pack before noon.

We killed buffaloes mostly, for that was the staple meat, meat that one never tired of eating. Antelope, deer, and elk meat was good fresh, for a change, but it did not dry well. As fast as we got the buffalo meat home, Sis-tsi-ah-ki divided it equally in quality and amount among the wives, and they cut it into very thin sheets, and hung it in the sun, and in about two days' time it dried out, and was then packed for transportation in _parfleches_, large rawhide receptacles shaped like an envelope, the flaps laced together.

Su-yi-kai-yi-ah-ki was of great help to us in our hunting. We often sent her into the timber, or around behind a ridge, or up a coulee to drive game to us, and she seldom failed to do it. She was also an expert wielder of the knife, able to skin an animal as quickly as either of us.

She was about my age, and tall and slender, quick in all her actions, and very beautiful. Her especial pride was her hair, which she always kept neatly done into two long braids. The ends of them almost touched the ground when she stood up straight. Best of all, she had the same kind heart and happy disposition as her mother, Sis-tsi-ah-ki.

Let me say here that a woman's or girl's name always terminated in "ah-ki," the term for woman. For instance, if a man was named after a bear, he would be called Kyai-yo. If a woman was so named, she would be Kyai-yo-ah-ki (Bear Woman).

From the junction of Belly River and Old Man's River, we trailed southwest across the plain to a large stream that I was told was named Ahk-ai-nus-kwo-na-e-tuk-tai (Gathering-of-Many-Chiefs River), for the reason that in years gone by the chiefs of the Blackfeet tribes had there met the chiefs of tribes living on the west side of the mountains, and concluded a peace treaty with them, which, however, lasted only two summers. We camped beside the river that evening, and the next day, following it up in its deep, wide valley, came to the sh.o.r.e of a large lake from which it ran, and there made camp. Never had I seen so beautiful a lake, or water so clear, and I said so as well as I could in signs and my small knowledge of the language I was trying so hard to learn.

"It is beautiful," Red Crow told me, "but wait until to-morrow; I will then show you a lake far larger and more beautiful.

"We call these the Lakes Inside," he went on. "See, this lake lies partly within the mountains. The one above is wholly within them. But you shall see it all to-morrow."

Over and over I repeated the name for them: Puhkt-o-muk-si-kim-iks (Lakes Inside), until sure that I would not forget it. Now they are known as St. Mary's Lakes.

The morning after we camped at the foot of the lake, Red Crow, his sister, Mink Woman, and I were riding up the east side of the lake soon after daylight, and before any of the hunters were ready to start out.

We followed a heavy game trail through quaking aspen groves and across little open, gra.s.sy parks, the still water of the lake always in view on our right, and across it the dark, timbered slope running up to a flat-topped mountain ending in an abrupt cliff hundreds of feet in height. We pa.s.sed a beautiful island close in to our sh.o.r.e, and saw a small band of elk crossing a gra.s.sy opening in its heavy timber. Elk and deer, and now and then a few buffaloes, were continually getting out of our way, and once I got a glimpse of a big bull moose as it trotted into a willow thicket, and learned its name from Red Crow's exclamation, "Siks-tsi-so!" But I did not know for some time that the word means "black-going-out-of-sight." A most appropriate name for the shy animal, for generally that is about all that the hunter sees of it, its dark hind quarters disappearing in the thick cover it inhabits.

Pa.s.sing the head of the lower lake, we crossed a half-mile wide prairie and came to the foot of the upper lake, long, narrow, and running back between mountains rising steeply to great height from the water's edge.

I have traveled far; from the St. Lawrence to Hudson's Bay, and from it to the Rockies, and along them south to the Great Salt Lake, but nowhere have I seen anything to equal the beauty of that lake, and the grandeur of its surrounding mountains. I fell in love with the place right then.

Red Crow was anxious to go on, but I made him wait until I gazed and gazed at the wonderful scene before me. It was all so beautiful, and yet so stern, that it hurt. Grim, cold, defiant were the rocky heights of the mountains, and blue-black the water of the lake because of its great depth; but for all that I was fascinated by it all. I felt that I would like to camp there a long, long time and climb all those tremendous heights, and explore the whole of the great valley.

"Come!" Red Crow called out at last, and we rode on, crossing the river on a good ford not far below the foot of the lake, and then following another big-game trail through more groves and parks along the west side of the lake. Even here, away back from the plains, were several herds of buffaloes, and more deer and elk trotting and running from our near approach. I was more than once tempted to shoot at one of them, but Red Crow kept signing to me: "Wait! We will kill above here."

At last we arrived at the foot of a long, rocky, and in most places wall-like ridge that ran from the mountains out across the valley and ended in a high cliff jutting out over the lake. We left our horses at the foot of it, followed a game trail up through a break in the wall and came out on the spa.r.s.ely timbered, rounding top, gra.s.s-grown in places.

Beyond, the lake, mountain walled, ran back several miles farther.

Beyond it a narrow and heavily timbered valley ran away back toward the summit of the range, where reposed long, high belts of what I thought was snow, but later learned was glacial ice, leavings of Cold Maker, the Pi-kun-i say, and his sign that, though the sun has driven him back into the Far North, he will come again with his winds and snows.

We went on a few paces and Red Crow suddenly stopped and pointed to some moving white figures high up on the steep side of a red-rocked mountain ahead and to our right. He made the sign for them: one's forefingers sloping upward and backward from each side of the head above the ears, and by that I knew that they had slender, backward curved horns.

"Ai-po-muk-a-kin-a," he called them, meaning "white-big-heads." I had seen a few skins of the animals at the fort, and the factor had told me that they were those of the Rocky Mountain ibex.

"We will go up and kill some of them!" Red Crow said, and we began a climb that lasted for hours. It was my first real mountain climb and I liked it even though I did s.h.i.+ver and sometimes feel faint, when we made our way along the edge of cliffs where a slip of the foot would mean the end for us. We climbed almost straight up and down watercourses; over steep ridges; and then from one rocky, timbered shelf to another, and at last approached the place where we had last seen the animals. Red Crow signed us to be cautious, and with ready bow and arrows led the way across a wide rock shelf, I close at his heels with my gun well primed and c.o.c.ked, and right at my shoulder his sister, just as eager to see the game as we were. As we neared the edge of the shelf Red Crow motioned us to step up in line with him, and then we all very carefully looked down over it and saw the animals.

But there was something going on with them that made Red Crow motion me to hold still. There were five, all big, white, long-haired males, and all standing at the edge of the shelf just under us, and looking intently at something below that we could not see. Their bodies were much the shape of the buffalo, high over the shoulders, low behind, and very deep chested; and they had long hair pantalettes at the knees, and a long beard. But their heads were very different; long, narrow, flat-faced. Foolish-faced, I thought. Their hair was more of a creamy color than white, and their horns, round, long, slender, curving back to a sharp point, were coal black, as were their eyes, nose, and hoofs. But strangest of all was the att.i.tude of the one on the right of the row; he was sitting down on his haunches, just as a dog or cat sits, as he stared down, and such a position for a hoofed animal, a ruminant, was so odd, so funny, that I almost laughed aloud.

We were not fifty feet above the ibexes, but so intent were they upon what they were watching that they never looked up. Whatever it was, it seemed to be on the shelf of rock just below them and moving to the right, for the ibexes' heads kept turning steadily that way as they watched it. Then presently we saw what it was: another ibex. He came up on the shelf that they were on, a very big, old male, and advanced toward them, and they all turned to face him, backs humped, hair bristling forward, heads lowered, and one advanced, trotting sideways, to meet him. He had also bristled up, and we thought that we were to see a big fight. They met, smelled one another's noses, and leaped into the air, coming down several feet apart, stood motionless for some time, and then the one that belonged to the band went back to his companions while another went forward and through the same performance with the newcomer.

It was a very funny sight.

But I was becoming anxious to shoot. I wanted one of the strange animals and was afraid that if we delayed firing they might become aware of us and suddenly take to flight. I nudged Red Crow and signed him to shoot, and as he raised his bow I aimed at the newcomer, biggest of them all.

Tw.a.n.g, went the bow, and whoom, my gun! My animal fell, as did the one Red Crow had chosen for his arrow, and both made faint attempts to regain their feet. The others did not run. Without doubt they had never heard the report of a gun before, and mistook it for the dropping of a time-loosened rock from the heights above. They just stood and stared at their fallen companions, and I drew back from the edge of the shelf and began reloading my gun, while Red Crow continued firing arrow after arrow from the bunch he held in his left hand with the bow. I was not long getting the charge down and pouring priming into the pan, and then I advanced for another shot.

Can you imagine my surprise when I found that I was too late? All the little band were down, dead and dying, and, as I looked, the last of them ceased struggling and lay still! I stared at them, at Red Crow and his bow, and at my gun. In many ways mine was the better weapon, but for running buffaloes, and other quick shooting at short range, I saw that the bow was the thing to use. Right there I determined to get a bow outfit and learn to use it, and always to carry it on my back, and my gun in my hands.

We found a place to get down from our shelf to the dead animals, and I carefully examined mine before skinning it. I found that it had a thick growth of short wool underneath its long, coa.r.s.e hair, and after that never wondered at the ability of its kind to withstand cold. In winter, the more severe the weather and deep the snow, the higher they range on the mountains, seeking the bare rock which the fierce winds keep free from snow, for there grows their favorite food, moss, and several varieties of lichen.

When I began skinning my kill I was struck by its peculiar odor, just like that of a muskrat and a hundred times as strong. At the rear base of each horn I found a wart-like black gland filled with yellowish, greasy musk. When I finished skinning my animal I began on another, and we soon had them all skinned. I then took the boss, or dorsal ribs, of my kill and wrapped them in the two hides I was to carry, although Red Crow and his sister laughed at me, and gave me to understand that the meat was not good. I confess that I did not enjoy it. It was coa.r.s.e and tough, and musky. However, a young, fat male or female of this high mountain species is good eating--when no other kind of meat is obtainable.

While we were preparing to leave the shelf I saw my first bighorns, a band of ewes and young between us and the lake, and five big rams on the mountain-side to the south of us. We had no time to go after them, as the sun was getting low, and anyhow I was well satisfied with our success of the day. We hurried down the mountain to our horses and started on the long trail to camp. Whenever we crossed a park and looked out upon the lake we saw its calm surface broken by the jumping of hundreds of fish, some of the splashes undoubtedly made by fish of great size. I afterward found that they were the so-called Mackinaw trout, running in weight up to forty pounds. Besides them these lakes are full of cutthroat trout, and what the whites call Dolly Varden trout, and whitefish.

The sun had set when we crossed the river and the big prairie at the foot of the upper lake, and started on the trail along the lower lake.

It was almost dark when, hurrying along at a good lope, we crossed the park opposite the island, and entered a quaking aspen grove. And then, without warning, Red Crow's horse gave a sudden sideways leap and threw him, and went snorting and tearing off to the right, and Mink Woman's and my horses took after him, plunging and kicking with fright, and try as we would we could not stop them. I saw the girl knocked from her horse by a projecting, low bough of a cottonwood tree. Behind us Red Crow was shouting "Kyai-yo! Kyai-yo! Spom-ok-it!" (A bear! A bear!

Help!)

As I could not stop my horse I sprang off him, holding fast to my gun, pa.s.sed Mink Woman struggling to her feet, and ran to a.s.sist my friend, his continued cries for help almost drowned by the terrible roars of an angry bear. Never had I heard anything so terrible. It struck fear to my heart. I wanted to turn and run from it, but I just couldn't! And there close behind me came the girl, crying, "Spom-os! Spom-os!" (Help him!

Help him!) I just gritted my teeth and kept on.

CHAPTER IV

A FIGHT WITH THE RIVER PEOPLE

I went but a little way through the brush when, in the dim light, I saw Red Crow clinging with both hands to a slender, swaying, quaking aspen, and jerking up his feet from the up-reaching swipes of a big bear's claws. He could find no lodgment for his feet and could climb no higher; as it was, the little tree threatened to snap in two at any moment. It was bending more and more to the right, and directly over the bear, and he was lifting his legs higher and higher. There was no time to be lost!

Scared though I was, I raised my gun, took careful sight for a heart shot at the big animal, and pulled the trigger. Whoom! And the bear gave a louder roar than ever, fell and clawed at its side, then rose and came after me, and as I turned to run I saw the little tree snap in two and Red Crow drop to the ground.

I turned only to b.u.mp heavily into Mink Woman, and we fell, both yelling, and sprang up and ran for our lives, expecting that every jump would be our last. But we had gone only a short way when it struck me that we were not being pursued, and then, oh, how can I describe the relief I felt when I heard Red Crow shout to us: "Puk-si-put!

Ahk-ai-ni!" (Come! He is dead!)

Well, when I heard that my strength seemed suddenly to go from me, and I guess that the girl felt the same way. We turned back, hand in hand, wabbly on our legs, and gasping as we recovered our breath. Again and again Red Crow called to us, and at last I got enough wind into me to answer him, and he came to meet us, and led us back to the bear.

I had not thought that a grizzly could be as big as it was. It lay there on its side as big bodied as a buffalo cow. The big mouth was open, exposing upper and lower yellow fangs as long as my forefinger. I lifted up one huge forefoot and saw that the claws were four inches and more in length. Lastly, I saw that there was an arrow deep in its breast.

Then, as we stood there, Red Crow made me understand that when his horse threw him and he got to his feet, he found the bear standing erect facing him, and he had fired an arrow into it and taken to the nearest tree. I knew the rest. I saw that the arrow had pierced the bear's lungs; that it would have bled to death anyhow. But my shot had been a heart shot, and just in time, for the little tree was bending, breaking even as I fired, and the bear would have had Red Crow had it not started in pursuit of us.

"The claws, you take them!" Red Crow now signed to me. But I refused. I knew how highly they were valued for necklace ornaments, and I wanted no necklace. Nor did I want the great hide, for its new coat was short, and the old winter coat still clung to it in faded yellow patches. Red Crow quickly unjointed the long fore claws, and we hunted around and found our ibex hides, which had come to the ground with us, and resumed our way in the gathering night. The horses had, of course, gone on, and would never stop until they found the band in which they belonged.

After the experience we had had, we went on with fear in our hearts, imagining that every animal we heard moving was a bear. There was no moon, and in the thick groves we had to just feel our way. But at last we pa.s.sed the foot of the lake and saw the yellow gleaming of the hundreds of lodges of the camp on the far side of the river. The ford was too deep, the water too swift for us to cross it on foot, so we called for help, and several who heard came over on horseback and took us up behind, and across to the camp, where we found Lone Walker was gathering a party to go in search for us.