With the Indians in the Rockies Read online

  CHAPTER III

  "There! Something tells me that will bring us good luck," saidPitamakan, when he had finished the medicine song. "First of all, wemust find shelter from the rain. Let us hurry and search for it up therealong the foot of the cliffs."

  Leaving the trail, we pushed our way up the steep slope of the valley,through underbrush that dropped a shower of water on us at the slightesttouch. There were only a few hundred yards between us and the foot ofthe big wall which shot high above the tops of the pines, but by thetime we arrived there night had fairly come. At this point a huge pileof boulders formed the upper edge of the slope, and for a moment westood undecided which way to turn. "Toward home, of course!" Pitamakanexclaimed, and led the way along the edge of the boulders, and finallyto the cliff. There in front of us was a small, jagged aperture, andstooping down, we tried to see what it was like inside. The darkness,however, was impenetrable.

  I could hear my companion sniffing; soon he asked, "Do you smellanything?"

  But I could detect no odor other than that of the dank forest floor, andsaid so.

  "Well, I think that I smell bear!" he whispered, and we both leapedback, and then stealthily drew away from the place. But the rain wasfalling now in a heavy downpour; the rising wind lashed it in our facesand made the forest writhe and creak and snap. Every few moments someold dead pine went down with a crash. It was a terrible night.

  "We can't go on!" said Pitamakan. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Bears do notlie down for their winter sleep until the snow has covered up theirfood. We must go back and take our chance of one being there in thathole."

  We felt our way along the foot of the cliff until we came to the place.There we knelt down, hand in hand, sniffed once more, and exclaimed,"_Kyaiyo!_" (Bear!)

  "But not strong; only a little odor, as if one had been here lastwinter," Pitamakan added. "The scent of one sticks in a place a longtime."

  Although I was shivering so much from the cold and wet that my teethrattled, I managed to say, "Come on! We've got to go in there."

  Crawling inch by inch, feeling of the ground ahead, and often stoppingto sniff the air and listen, we made our cautious way inside, andpresently came to a fluffy heap of dried grass, small twigs and leavesthat rustled at our touch.

  "Ah, we survive, brother!" Pitamakan exclaimed, in a cheerful voice."The bear has been here and made himself a bed for the winter; theyalways do that in the month of falling leaves. He isn't here now,though, and if he does come we will yell loud and scare him away."

  Feeling round now to learn the size of the place, we found that it wassmall and low, and sloped to the height of a couple of feet at the back.Having finished the examination, we burrowed down into the grass andleaves, snuggled close together, and covered ourselves as well as wecould. Little by little we stopped shivering, and after a while feltcomfortably warm, although wet.

  We fell to talking then of our misfortune, and planning various ways toget out of the bad fix we were in. Pitamakan was all for following theKootenays, stealing into their camp at night, and trying to recover notonly our horses, but, if possible, our rifles also. I made the objectionthat even if we got a whole night's start of the Kootenays, they,knowing the trails better than we did, would overtake us before we couldride to the summit. We finally agreed to follow the trail of our enemiesand have a look at their camp; we might find some way of getting backwhat they had taken.

  We really slept well. In the morning I awoke first, and looking out, sawnothing but thick, falling snow. I nudged my companion, and together wecrept to the mouth of the cave. The snow was more than a foot deep infront of us, and falling so fast that only the nearest of the big pinesbelow could be seen. The weather was not cold, certainly not much belowfreezing, but it caused our damp clothing to feel like ice against theskin. We crept back into our nest, shivering again.

  "With this snow on the ground, it would be useless to try to takeanything from the Kootenays," I said.

  "True enough. They could follow our tracks and easily overtake us,"Pitamakan agreed.

  As he said no more for a long time, and would not even answer when Iasked a question, I, too, became silent. But not for long; so manyfears and doubts were oppressing me that I had to speak. "We had betterstart on, then, and try to cross the summit."

  Pitamakan shook his head slowly. "Neither we nor any one else will crossthe summit until summer comes again. This is winter. See, the snow isalmost to our knees out there; up on top it is over our heads."

  "Then we must die right here!" I exclaimed.

  For answer, my partner began the coyote prayer song, and kept singing itover and over, except when he would break out into prayers to the sun,and to Old Man--the World-Maker--to give us help. There in the lowlittle cave his song sounded muffled and hollow enough. Had I not beenwatching his face, I must have soon begged him to stop, it was somournful and depressing.

  But his face kept brightening and brightening until he actually smiled;and finally he turned to me and said, "Do not worry, brother. Takecourage. They have put new thoughts into me."

  I asked what the thoughts were, and he replied by asking what we mostneeded.

  "Food, of course," I said. "I am weak from hunger."

  "I thought you would say that!" he exclaimed. "It is always food withwhite people. Get up in the morning and eat a big meal; at midday,another; at sunset, another. If even one of these is missed, they saythey are starving. No, brother, we do not most need food. We could gowithout it half a moon and more, and the long fast would only do usgood."

  I did not believe that. It was the common belief in those times that aperson could live for only a few days without food.

  "No, it is not food; it is fire that we most need," Pitamakan continued."Were we to go out in that snow and get wet and then have no means ofdrying and warming ourselves, we should die."

  "Well, then, we must just lie here and wait for the snow to melt away,"I said, "for without flint and steel we can have no fire."

  "Then we will lie here until next summer. This country is different fromours of the plains. There the snow comes and goes many times during thewinter; here it only gets deeper and deeper, until the sun beatsCold-Maker, and comes north again."

  I believed that to be true, for I remembered that my uncle had told meonce that there were no chinook winds on the west side of the range. SoI proposed what had been on my mind for some time: that we go to thecamp of the Kootenays and beg them to give us shelter.

  "If they didn't kill us, they would only beat us and drive us away. No,we cannot go to them," said Pitamakan decidedly. "Now don't look so sad;we shall have fire."

  He must have read my thoughts, for he added, "I see that you don'tbelieve that I can make fire. Listen! Before you white people came withyour flints and steels, we had it. Old Man himself taught us how to makeit. I have never seen it made in the old way because my people got thenew way before I was born. But I have often heard the older ones tellhow it used to be made, and I believe that I can do it myself. It iseasy. You take a small, dry, hard stick like an arrow-shaft, and twirlit between the palms of your hands, or with a bowstring, while the pointrests in a hole in a piece of dry wood, with fine shreds of birch barkin it. The twirling stick heats these and sets them on fire."

  Although I did not understand this explanation very well, I yet had somefaith that Pitamakan could make the fire. He added that he would not tryit until the weather cleared, and we could go round in the timberwithout getting wet except from the knees down.

  We lay there in the bear's bed all that day. At sunset the snow ceasedfalling, but when the clouds disappeared, the weather turned muchcolder, and it was well for us that the heat of our bodies had prettythoroughly dried our clothing. As it was, we shivered all through thenight, and were very miserable.

  Out in the darkness we heard some animal scraping through the snow, andfeared that it might be the bear come to get into its bed. We had talkedabout that. If it was a black bear, we were s
afe enough, because theyare the most cowardly of all animals, and even when wounded, will notattack a man. But what if it were a big grizzly! We both knew talesenough of their ferocity. Only that summer a woman, picking berries, hadbeen killed by one.

  So when we heard those soft footsteps we yelled; stopped and listened,and yelled again, and again, until we were hoarse. Then we listened. Allwas still. Whatever had roused us was gone, but fear that a grizzlywould come shuffling in kept us awake.

  Day came long before the sun rose above the tremendous peaks thatseparated us from the plains. Much as we ached to crawl out of the caveand run and jump, we lay still until the sun had warmed the air a bit.The night before I had been ravenously hungry; but now my hunger hadlargely passed, and Pitamakan said that I would soon forget all aboutfood.

  "But we can't live all winter without eating!" I objected.

  "Of course not," he replied. "As soon as we have fire, we will gohunting and kill game. Then we will make us a comfortable lodge. Oh,we're going to be very comfortable here before many days pass."

  "But the Kootenays!" I objected. "They will come again and drive us on,or kill us!"

  "Just now they are moving out of the mountains as fast as they can go,and will not return until summer comes again."

  When we finally crawled out after our long rest, we saw that a bearreally had been near us in the night. It had come walking along theslope, close to the foot of the cliff, until right in front of the cave,and then, startled, no doubt, by our yells, had gone leaping straightdown into the timber. The short impressions of its claws in the snowproved it to have been a black bear. We were glad of that; anothernight, fear, at least, would not prevent us from sleeping.

  Both of us were clothed for summer hunting, I in buckskin trousers andflannel shirt, with no underclothing or socks. Pitamakan wore buffalocow-leather leggings, breech-clout, and, fortunately, a shirt like minethat his aunt had given him. Neither of us had coat or waistcoat, but inplace of them, capotes, hooded coats reaching to our knees, made ofwhite blanket by the tailor at the fort. The snow looked very cold tostep into with only thin buckskin moccasins on our feet, and I said so.

  "We will remedy that," said Pitamakan. He pulled off his capote, tore acouple of strips from the skirt of it, and then did the same with mine.With these we wrapped our feet, pulled our moccasins on over them, andfelt that our toes were frost-proof.

  The snow was knee-deep. Stepping into it bravely, we made our way downthe slope and into the timber. There it was not so deep, for a part ofthe fall had lodged in the thick branches of the pines. We came upon thetracks of deer and elk, and presently saw a fine white-tail buck staringcuriously at us. The sight of his rounded, fat body brought the hungryfeeling back to me, and I expressed it with a plaintive "_Hai-yah!_" oflonging.

  Pitamakan understood. "Never mind," he said, as the animal broke away,waving its broad flag as if in derision. "Never mind. We will be eatingfat ribs to-morrow, perhaps; surely on the next day."

  That talk seemed so big to me that I said nothing, asked no question, aswe went on down the hill. Before reaching the river we saw several moredeer, a lone bull moose and a number of elk; the valley was full ofgame, driven from the high mountains by the storm.

  The river was not frozen, nor was there any snow on the low, wet, rockybars to hinder our search for a knife. That was what we were to lookfor, just as both Pitamakan's and my own ancestors had searched, inprehistoric times, for sharp-edged tools in glacial drift and riverwash. I was to look for flint and "looks-like-ice rock," as theBlackfeet call obsidian. As I had never seen any obsidian, except in theform of very small, shiny arrow-points, it was not strange thatPitamakan found a nodule of it on a bar that I had carefully gone over.It was somewhat the shape of a football, rusty black, and coated withsplotches of stuff that looked like whitewash. I could not believe thatit was what we sought until he cracked it open and I saw the glitteringfragments.

  Pitamakan had never seen any flint or obsidian flaked and chipped intoarrow-points and knives, but he had often heard the old people tell howit was done, and now he tried to profit by the information. With a smallstone for a hammer, he gently tapped one of the fragments, and succeededin splintering it into several thin, sharp-edged flakes. Carefullytaking up all the fragments and putting them at the foot of a tree forfuture use, we went in search of material for the rest of thefire-making implements.

  We knew from the start that finding them would not be easy, for beforethe snow came, rain had thoroughly soaked the forest, and what we neededwas bone-dry wood. We had hunted for an hour or more, when a half-dozenruffed grouse flushed from under the top of a fallen tree and flew upinto the branches of a big fir, where they sat and craned their necks.Back came my hungry feeling; here was a chance to allay it. "Come on,let's get some stones and try to kill those birds!" I cried.

  Away we went to the shore of the river, gathered a lot of stones in theskirts of our capotes, and hurried back to the tree. The birds werestill there, and we began throwing at the one lowest down. We watchedthe course of each whizzing stone with intense eagerness, groaning,"_Ai-ya!_" when it went wide of the mark. Unlike white boys, Indianyouths are very inexpert at throwing stones, for the reason that theyconstantly carry a better weapon, the bow, and begin at a very early ageto hunt small game with it. I could cast the stones much more accuratelythan Pitamakan, and soon he handed what he had left to me.

  Although I made some near shots, and sent the stones clattering againstthe branches and zipping through the twigs, the bird never once moved,except to flutter a wing when a missile actually grazed it or struck thelimb close to its feet. With the last stone of the lot I hit a grouse,and as it started fluttering down we made a rush for the foot of thetree, whooping wildly over our success, and frightening the rest of thecovey so that they flew away.

  The wounded bird lodged for a moment in a lower branch, toppled out ofthat into another, fluttered from that down into clear space. Pitamakansprang to catch it, and grasped only the air; for the bird righteditself, sailed away and alighted in the snow, fifty yards distant. Weran after it as fast as we could. It was hurt. We could see that it haddifficulty in holding up its head, and that its mouth was open. We feltcertain of our meat. But no! Up it got when we were about to make ourpounce, and half fluttered and half sailed another fifty yards or so.Again and again it rose, we hot after it, and finally it crossed theriver. But that did not daunt us. The stream was wide there, running ina still sweep over a long bar; and we crossed, and in our hurry,splashed ourselves until we were wet above the waist. Then, after all,the grouse rose long before we came anywhere near it, and this timeflew on and on until lost to sight!

  Our disappointment was too keen to be put into words. Dripping wet andas miserable a pair of boys as ever were, we stood there in the coldsnow and looked sadly at each other. "Oh, well, come on," saidPitamakan. "What is done is done. We will now get the wood we want andmake a fire to dry ourselves."

  He led off, walked to a half-fallen fir, and from the under side brokeoff just what we were looking for--a hard, dry spike about twice thediameter of a lead-pencil and a foot or more in length. That did seem tobe good luck, and our spirits rose. We went out to the shore of theriver, where I was set to rounding off the base of the spike andsharpening the point, first by rubbing it on a coarse-grained rock, andthen smoothing it with a flake of obsidian. I ruined the edge of thefirst piece by handling it too vigorously; the brittle stone had to beforced slowly and diagonally along the place to be cut.

  AGAIN AND AGAIN IT ROSE]

  Pitamakan, meanwhile, was hunting a suitable piece of wood for the drillto work in. Hard wood, he had heard the old people say, was necessaryfor this, and here the only growth of the kind was birch.

  By the time I got the drill shaped, he had found none that was dry, andI was glad to help in the search, for I was nearly frozen from standingstill so long in my wet clothes. Up and down the river we went, and backinto the forest, examining every birch that appea
red to be dead. Everyone that we found was rotten, or only half dry. It was by the merestchance that we found the very thing: a beaver-cutting of birch, cast bythe spring freshet under a projecting ledge of rock, where it wasprotected from the rains. It was almost a foot in diameter and severalfeet long. We rubbed a coarse stone against the centre of it until theplace was flat and a couple of inches wide, and in that started a smallhole with the obsidian. This was slow work, for the glasslike substanceconstantly broke under the pressure needed to make it cut into the wood.It was late in the day when the gouging was finished, and we prepared toput our tools to the test.

  This was an occasion for prayer. Pitamakan so earnestly entreated hisgods to pity us, to make our work successful, and thus save our lives,that, unsympathetic as I was with his beliefs, I could not help beingmoved. I wanted to be stoical; to keep up a brave appearance to thelast; but this pathetic prayer to heathen gods, coming as it did when Iwas weak from hunger and exposure, was too much. To this day I rememberthe exact words of it, too long to repeat here. I can translate only theclosing sentence: "Also, have pity on us because of our dear people onthe other side of the range, who are even now weeping in their lodgesbecause we do not return to them."

  When he had finished the prayer, Pitamakan took the drill in the palmsof his hands and set the point of it in the small, rough hole in thebirch. We had already gathered some dry birch bark, and I held some ofit, shredded into a fluffy mass, close round the drill and the pole.

  "Now, fire come!" Pitamakan exclaimed, and began to twirl the drillbetween his hands, at the same time pressing it firmly down in the hole.

  But no smoke came. What was the reason? He stopped and raised the drill;we felt of it and the hole; both were very hot, and I suggested that wetake turns drilling, changing about in the least possible time. We triedit, and oh, how anxiously we watched for success, drilling and drillingfor our very lives, drilling turn about until our muscles were sostrained that we could not give the stick another twirl! Then we droppedback and stared at each other. Our experiment had failed. Night wascoming on. Our wet clothing was beginning to freeze, and there was theriver between us and the shelter of our cave.

  The outlook seemed hopeless, and I said so. Pitamakan said nothing; hiseyes had a strange, vacant expression. "We can do nothing," I repeated."Right here we have to die."

  Still he did not answer, or even look at me, and I said to myself, "Hehas gone mad!"