With the Indians in the Rockies Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  "If they will not do," Pitamakan muttered, rising stiffly, while the iceon his leggings crackled, "why, I'll cut off a braid of my hair."

  I was now sure that our troubles had weakened his mind; no Indian in hisright senses would think of cutting off his hair.

  "Pitamakan! What is the trouble with you?" I asked, looking up anxiouslyat him.

  "Why, nothing is the matter," he replied. "Nothing is the matter. Wemust now try to work the drill with a bow. If our moccasin strings aretoo rotten to bear the strain, I'll have to make a bow cord by cuttingoff some of my hair and braiding it."

  It was a great relief to know that he was sane enough, but I had littlefaith in this new plan, and followed listlessly as he went here andthere, testing the branches of willow and birch. Finally, he got fromthe river shore one stone that was large and smooth, and another thathad a sharp edge. Then, scraping the snow away from the base of a birchshoot a couple of inches in diameter, he laid the smooth stone at itsbase. Next he bade me bend the shoot close down on the smooth stone,while with the sharp edge of the other he hit the strained wood fibre afew blows. In this way he easily severed the stem. Cutting off the topof the sapling in the same manner, he had a bow about three feet inlength; a rough, clumsy piece of wood, it is true, but resilient.

  As my moccasin strings were buckskin and much stronger than Pitamakan'scow-leather ones, we used one of mine for the bowstring. We now carriedthe base stick and drill back from the creek into the thick timber,gathered a large bunch of birch bark and a pile of fine and coarsetwigs, and made ready for this last attempt to save ourselves.

  We hesitated to begin; uncertainty as to the result was better thansure knowledge of failure, but while we waited we began to freeze. Itwas a solemn and anxious moment when Pitamakan set the point of thedrill in the hole, made one turn of the bowstring round its centre, andheld it in place by pressing down with the palm of his left hand on thetip. With his right hand he grasped the bow, and waiting until I had theshredded bark in place round the hole, he once more started the coyoteprayer song and began sawing the bow forth and back, precisely themotion of a cross-cut saw biting into a standing tree.

  The wrap of the string caused the drill to twirl with amazing rapidity,and at the third or fourth saw he gave a howl of pain and dropped theoutfit. I had no need to ask why. The drill tip had burned his hand;when he held it out a blister was already puffing up.

  We changed places, and I gathered the skirt of my capote in a bunch toprotect my hand. I began to work the bow, faster and faster, until thedrill moaned intermittently, like a miniature buzz-saw. In a moment ortwo I thought that I saw a very faint streak of smoke stealing upbetween my companion's fingers.

  He was singing again, and did not hear my exclamation as I made surethat my eyes had not deceived me. Smoke actually was rising. I sawedharder and harder; more and more smoke arose, but there was no flame.

  "Why not?" I cried. "Oh, why don't you burn?"

  Pitamakan's eyes were glaring anxiously, greedily at the blue curlingvapor. I continued to saw with all possible rapidity, but still therewas no flame; instead, the smoke began to diminish in volume. A chillran through me as I saw it fail.

  I was on the point of giving up, of dropping the bow and saying thatthis was the end of our trail, when the cause of the failure was madeplain to me. Pitamakan was pressing the shredded bark too tight roundthe drill and into the hole; there could be no fire where there was noair. "Raise your fingers!" I shouted. "Loosen up the bark!"

  I had to repeat what I said before he understood and did as he was told.Instantly the bark burst into flame.

  "Fire! Fire! Fire!" I cried, as I hastily snatched out the drill.

  "_I-puh-kwi-is! I-puh-kwi-is!_" (It burns! It burns!) Pitamakan shouted.

  He held a big wad of bark to the tiny flame, and when it ignited,carried the blazing, sputtering mass to the pile of fuel that we hadgathered and thrust it under the fine twigs. These began to crackle andsnap, and we soon had a roaring fire. Pitamakan raised his hands to thesky and reverently gave thanks to his gods; I silently thanked my ownfor the mercy extended to us. From death, at least by freezing, we weresaved!

  The sun was setting. In the gathering dusk we collected a huge pile ofdead wood, every piece in the vicinity that we had strength to lift andcarry, some of them fallen saplings twenty and thirty feet long. I wasfor putting a pile of them on the fire and having a big blaze. I didthrow on three or four large chunks, but Pitamakan promptly lifted themoff.

  "That is the way of white people!" he said. "They waste wood and stand,half freezing, away back from the big blaze. Now we will have this inthe way we Lone People do it, and so will we get dry and warm."

  While I broke off boughs of feathery balsam fir and brought in hugearmfuls of them, he set up the frame of a small shelter close to thefire. First, he placed a triangle of heavy sticks, so that the stubs ofbranches at their tops interlocked, and then he laid up numerous sticksside by side, and all slanting together at the top, so as to fill twosides of the triangle. These we shingled with the fir boughs, layerafter layer, to a thickness of several feet. With the boughs, also, wemade a soft bed within.

  We now had a fairly comfortable shelter. In shape it was roughly likethe half of a hollow cone, and the open part faced the fire. Creepinginto it, we sat on the bed, close to the little blaze. Some cold airfiltered through the bough thatching and chilled our backs. Pitamakanpulled off his capote and told me to do the same. Spreading them out, hefastened them to the sticks of the slanting roof and shut off the draft.The heat radiating from the fire struck them, and reflecting, warmed ourbacks. The ice dropped from our clothes and they began to steam; we wereactually comfortable.

  But now that the anxieties and excitement of the day were over, and Ihad time to think about other things than fire, back came my hunger withgreater insistence than ever. I could not believe it possible for us togo without eating as long as Pitamakan said his people were able tofast. Worse still, I saw no possible way for us to get food. When Isaid as much to Pitamakan, he laughed.

  "Take courage; don't be an afraid person," he said. "Say to yourself, 'Iam not hungry,' and keep saying it, and soon it will be the truth toyou. But we will not fast very long. Why, if it were necessary, I wouldget meat for us this very night."

  I stared at him. The expression of his eyes was sane enough. I fanciedthat there was even a twinkle of amusement in them. If he was making ajoke, although a sorry one, I could stand it; but if he really meantwhat he said, then there could be no doubt but that his mind wandered.

  "Lie down and sleep," I said. "You have worked harder than I, and sleepwill do you good. I will keep the fire going."

  At that he laughed, a clear, low laugh of amusement that was good tohear. "Oh, I meant what I said. I am not crazy. Now think hard. Is thereany possible way for us to get food this night?"

  "Of course there isn't," I replied, after a moment's reflection. "Don'tjoke about the bad fix we are in; that may make it all the worse forus."

  He looked at me pityingly. "Ah, you are no different from the rest ofthe whites. True, they are far wiser than we Lone People. But take awayfrom them the things their powerful medicine has taught them how tomake, guns and powder and ball, fire steels and sticks, knives andclothes and blankets of hair, take from them these things and theyperish. Yes, they die where we should live, and live comfortably."

  I felt that there was much truth in what he said. I doubted if any ofthe company's men, even the most experienced of them, would have beenable to make a fire had they been stripped of everything that theypossessed. But his other statement, that if necessary he could get foodfor us at once.

  "Where could you find something for us to eat now?" I asked.

  "Out there anywhere," he replied, with a wave of the hand. "Haven't younoticed the trails of the rabbits, hard-packed little paths in the snow,where they travel round through the brush? Yes, of course you have.Well, after t
he middle of the night, when the moon rises and gives somelight, I could go out there and set some snares in those paths, usingour moccasin strings for loops, and in a short time we would have arabbit; maybe two or three of them."

  How easy a thing seems, once you know how to do it! I realized instantlythat the plan was perfectly feasible, and wondered at my own dullness innot having thought of it. I had been sitting up stiffly enough beforethe fire, anxiety over our situation keeping my nerves all a-quiver. Nowa pleasant sense of security came to me. I felt only tired and sleepy,and dropped back on the boughs.

  "Pitamakan, you are very wise," I said, and in a moment was soundasleep. If he answered I never heard him.

  Every time the fire died down the cold awoke one or both of us to put onfresh fuel; and then we slept again, and under the circumstances, passeda very restful night.

  Soon after daylight snow began to fall again, not so heavily as in theprevious storm, but with a steadiness that promised a long period of badweather. We did not mind going out into it, now that we could come backto a fire at any time and dry ourselves.

  Before setting forth, however, we spent some time in making two rudewillow arrows. We mashed off the proper lengths with our "anvil" andcutting-stone, smoothed the ends by burning them, and then scraped theshafts and notched them with our obsidian knives. I proposed that wesharpen the points, but Pitamakan said no; that blunt ones were betterfor bird shooting, because they smashed the wing bones. Pitamakan hadworked somewhat on the bow during the evening, scraping it thinner anddrying it before the fire, so that now it had more spring; enough toget us meat, he thought. The great difficulty would be to shoot theunfeathered, clumsy arrows true to the mark.

  Burying some coals deep in the ashes to make sure that they would bealive upon our return, we started out. Close to camp, Pitamakan set tworabbit snares, using a part of our moccasin strings for the purpose. Hismanner of doing this was simple. He bent a small, springy sapling overthe rabbit path, and stuck the tip of it under a low branch of anothertree. Next he tied the buckskin string to the sapling, so that the nooseend of it hung cross-wise in the rabbit path, a couple of inches abovethe surface of it. Then he stuck several feathery balsam tips on eachside of the path, to hide the sides of the noose and prevent its beingblown out of place by the wind. When a passing rabbit felt the looptighten on its neck, its struggles would release the tip of thespring-pole from under the bough, and it would be jerked up in the airand strangled.

  From camp, we went down the valley, looking for grouse in all thethickest clumps of young pines. Several rabbits jumped up ahead of us,snow-white, big-footed and black-eyed. Pitamakan let fly an arrow at oneof them, but it fell short of the mark.

  There were game trails everywhere. The falling snow was fast fillingthem, so that we could not distinguish new tracks from old; but aftertraveling a half-mile or so, we began to see the animals themselves, elkand deer, singly, and in little bands. As we approached a tangle of redwillows, a bull, a cow, and a calf moose rose from the beds they hadmade in them. The cow and calf trotted away, but the bull, his hair allbristling forward, walked a few steps toward us, shaking his big,broad-horned head. The old trappers' tales of their ferocity at thistime of year came to my mind, and I began to look for a tree to climb;there was none near by. All had such a large circumference that I couldnot reach halfway round them.

  "Let's run!" I whispered.

  "Stand still!" Pitamakan answered. "If you run, he will come after us."

  The bull was not more than fifty yards from us. In the dim light of theforest his eyes, wicked little pig-like eyes, glowed with a greenishfire. The very shape of him was terrifying, more like a creature of baddreams than an actual inhabitant of the earth. His long head had athick, drooping upper lip; a tassel of black hair swung from his lowerjaw; at the withers he stood all of six feet high, and sloped back toinsignificant hind quarters; his long hair was rusty gray, shading intoblack. All this I took in at a glance. The bull again shook his head atus and advanced another step or two. "If he starts again, run for atree," Pitamakan said.

  That was a trying moment. We were certainly much afraid of him, and sowould the best of the company men have been had they stood thereweaponless in knee-deep snow. Once more he tossed his enormous horns;but just as he started to advance, a stick snapped in the direction inwhich the cow and calf had gone. At that he half turned and looked back,then trotted away in their trail. The instant he disappeared we startedthe other way, and never stopped until we came to our shelter.

  It was well for us that we did return just then. The falling snow waswetting the ash-heap, and the water would soon have soaked through tothe buried coals. We dug them up and started another fire, and satbefore it for some time before venturing out again. This experiencetaught us, when leaving camp thereafter, to cover the coal-heap with aroof of wood or bark.

  "Well, come on! Let's go up the valley this time, and see what willhappen to us there," said Pitamakan, when we had rested.

  Not three hundred yards above camp we came to a fresh bear trail, sofresh that only a very thin coating of snow had fallen since the passingof the animal. It led us to the river, when we saw that it continued onthe other side up to the timber, straight toward the cave that hadsheltered us. The tracks, plainly outlined in the sand at the edge ofthe water, were those of a black bear. "That is he, the one thatgathered the leaves and stuff we slept in, and he's going there now!"Pitamakan exclaimed.

  "If we only had his carcass, how much more comfortable we could be!" Isaid. "The hide would be warm and soft to lie on, and the fat meat wouldlast us a long time."

  "If he goes into the cave to stay, we'll get him," said Pitamakan. "Ifwe can't make bows and arrows to kill him, we will take strong, heavyclubs and pound him on the head."

  We went up the valley. Trailing along behind my companion, I thoughtover his proposal to club the bear to death. A month, even a few daysback, such a plan would have seemed foolish; but I was fast learningthat necessity, starvation, will cause a man to take chances againstthe greatest odds. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt likefacing that bear.

  I was about to propose that we go after it at once, when, with a whirrof wings that startled us, a large covey of blue grouse burst from athicket close by, and alighted here and there in the pines and firs. Wemoved on a few steps, and stopped within short bow-shot of one. It didnot seem to be alarmed at our approach, and Pitamakan took his time tofit one of the clumsy arrows and fire it.

  _Zip!_ The shaft passed a foot from its body, struck a limb above anddropped down into the snow. But the grouse never moved. Anxiously Iwatched the fitting and aiming of the other arrow.

  _Zip!_ I could not help letting out a loud yell when it hit fair and thebird came fluttering and tumbling down. I ran forward and fell on it theinstant it struck the snow, and grasped its plump body with tensehands. "Meat! See! We have meat!" I cried, holding up the fine cock.

  "Be still! You have already scared all the other birds out of thistree!" said Pitamakan.

  It was true. There had been three more in that fir, and now, because ofmy shouts, they were gone. Pitamakan looked at me reproachfully as hestarted to pick up the fallen arrows. Right there I learned a lesson inself-restraint that I never forgot.

  We knew that there were more grouse in near-by trees, but they sat sostill and were so much the color of their surroundings that we were sometime in discovering any of them. They generally chose a big limb tolight on, close to the bole of the tree. Finally our hungry eyes spiedthree in the next tree, and Pitamakan began shooting at the lower one,while I recovered the arrows for him.

  Luck was against us. It was nothing, but miss, miss, miss, and as one byone the arrows grazed the birds, they hurtled away through the forestand out of sight. We were more fortunate a little farther on, for we gottwo birds from a small fir. Then we hurried to camp with our prizes.

  I was for roasting the three of them at once, and eating a big feast;but Pitamakan declared that he would not
have any such doings. "We'lleat one now," he said, "one in the evening, and the other in themorning."

  We were so hungry that we could not wait to cook the first birdthoroughly. Dividing it, we half roasted the portions over the coals,and ate the partly raw flesh. Although far from enough, that was thebest meal I ever had. And it was not so small, either; the blue grouseis a large and heavy bird, next to the sage-hen the largest of ourgrouse. After eating, we went out and "rustled" a good pile of fuel. Asnight came on, we sat down before the blaze in a cheerful mood, andstraightway began to make plans for the future, which now seemed lessdark than at the beginning of the day.

  "With a better bow and better arrows, it is certain that we can killenough grouse to keep us alive," I said.

  "Not unless we have snowshoes to travel on," Pitamakan objected. "In afew days the snow will be so deep that we can no longer wade in it."

  "We can make them of wood," I suggested, remembering the tale of acompany man.

  "But we couldn't travel about barefooted. Our moccasins will last only aday or two longer. One of mine, you see, is already ripping along thesole. Brother, if we are ever to see green grass and our people again,these things must we have besides food--thread and needles, skins formoccasins, clothing and bedding, and a warm lodge. The weather is goingto be terribly cold before long."

  At that my heart went away down. I had thought only of food, forgettingthat other things were just as necessary. The list of them staggeredme--thread and needles, moccasins, and all the rest! "Well, then, wemust die," I exclaimed, "for we can never get all those things!"

  "We can and we will," said Pitamakan, cheerfully, "and the beginning ofit all will be a better bow and some real arrows, arrows with ice-rockor flint points. We will try to make some to-morrow. Hah! Listen!"

  I barely heard the plaintive squall, but he recognized it. "Come on,it's a rabbit in one of the snares!" he cried, and out we ran into thebrush.

  He was right. A rabbit, still kicking and struggling for breath, washanging in the farther snare. Resetting the trap, we ran, happy andlaughing, back to the fire with the prize.

  After all, we ate two grouse, instead of one, that evening, burying themunder the fire, and this time letting them roast long enough so that themeat parted easily from the bones.