––––––––
THE night was so dark that I could see no more than the dim outline of the talkers. They seemed to be a large party; forty or fifty men. I liked the sound of their language, so different from the ear-distressing talk of the Gros Ventres and the tribes on the far side of the Backbone-of-the-World. It had a peaceful, kindly sound; but I knew that the party was anything but peaceful. These men were raiders; their scouts had discovered the trader's fort and our lodge, and the horses belonging to us both, and were about to attack us. I knew that I had to get to camp ahead of them and give the alarm.
After what seemed a long time to me, they went on, and as soon as the soft thud and rustle of their footsteps died out, I thrust my gun crossways under my belt, swung down from the pole, and dropped to the ground and ran for home. Not straight for it: I circled to keep out of their way. And what mattered it if they did hear me stumbling through the brush? They would think I was some animal — a deer or elk running from them.
I fell twice before I reached the open grass-land of the bottom. From there, I made better time and soon passed the fort and the big corral in which were Ki-pah's and our horses. The trader had about twenty head that had been brought up overland from the fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
His men were sleeping in the finished trade-room. I did not stop to awaken them, for I knew that I could not make them understand. Straight to our lodge I went and aroused the sleepers.
"A war party is coming; a big war party; Assiniboines, I think," I told my father.
"Yes, I hear you," he answered. "Make no noise, any of you. Remain right here until I call you. I go to awaken the trader."
Ki-pah was a light sleeper. At the doorway of his lodge my father softly called and he came out at once, but he could not, of course, understand our language, and it was too dark for sign talking. But that didn't much matter. My father laid down his gun and took Ki-pah's hands; he drew the right one across his throat; then spread out both hands and arms and brought them together in a wide sweep; then held the left hand before his breast and brought the right hand quickly to — and on top of it.
And then Ki-pah understood. Cut-throats — Assiniboines — many — here were the three signs. And for answer he took my father's hands and with them made signs for "should all go to the fort." There Ki-pah awakened his men and they soon came out with their guns. He then had Sah-kwi-ah-ki take my mother and sister into the trade-room and bar the door, and half of the men he sent into the unfinished room adjoining it on the west. The rest of us went into the one on its east side. The logs were not yet chinked; there was plenty of room between them for us to thrust out our guns. The fort itself was one of the four sides of the corral; within it, right in front of us, were our horses.
Said my father: "Now let the cut-throats come. I hope that they will come soon: this is going to be a happy, happy time."
He loved a fight, did my father.
We stood a long time listening for the enemy and heard no sound of them. We wondered if they would attempt to get at the horses in the black darkness of the night or wait for the moon to rise. And as time passed we knew that they waited for its light. The Seven Persons marked the middle of the night when we saw the first, faint light from the moon in the eastern sky, and in a little while it was shining down upon us as it rose above the rim of the valley.
Then came the enemy but not from the direction we expected them to come. We were looking for them out on the open bottom, and on hands and knees they came crawling toward the fort from the near shore of the river. One of Ki-pah's men discovered them, and we all moved over to the south side of the room when he hissed and pointed out through a space between the logs. There were only eight crawlers. I whispered to my father that there had been forty or fifty in the party under my fasting-tree, and he told Ki-pah by signs what I had said. Ki-pah had told his men not to fire until he did, and he now signed the same to us.
On came the eight crawlers, nearer and nearer, until we could see them quite plainly. Each one had his blanket or leather wrap belted high at the waist and free from the tread of his knees, and each one carried his bow in his mouth and a bunch of arrows half-drawn from the quiver at his back. Not one of them had a gun.
Nearer and still nearer they crawled, and separated into two parties, four to circle around the west end and four around the east end of the fort. Pausing frequently to listen, going very slowly and silently when they did move, they passed — the four that we were watching—within fifty steps of our room and on around to the far side of the corral where they were joined by the other four.
We saw them all climb the poles of the corral and look into it at the horses there and for the entrance to it. That was right next to the room from which we were watching them; a set of seven poles that could be removed. They looked all along their side and the west side for it, and then all came around the corner and along the east side toward us, sure that they were to find it there.
They were halfway from the corner to us when a couple of guns boomed out by our lodges and were followed by loud shouts of victory. We knew what that meant: the main party of the raiders had surrounded the two lodges and fired low down into them, and had, they thought, killed us in our beds.
The eight we were watching stopped short when they heard the two guns, and then started to come.
At that instant one of the men with us let his gun off, — he said afterwards that it was an accident, — and then, of course, we all fired, Ki-pah first, and the flash of his gun blinded us and spoiled our aim.
Would you think it? When the smoke cleared away we saw but one man on the ground in front of us. The seven were running toward the river-bank— the nearest shelter. Ha, my son, some of them were never to reach it!
The rest of Ki-pah's white men, they in the west room, had had no chance to shoot, and they now rushed out from the place and took aim at the running enemy, and fired. Six guns were they, and they tumbled over three of the runners. We were reloading our guns, meantime, and running outside, but were not quick enough for another shot. Down jumped the surviving four from the bank to the shore sands and were gone.
The shouting out by our lodges had stopped short when our first gun went off; the night was as quiet as though nothing at all had happened. My father gave four loud whoops, and then sang the victory song with mighty voice. "Just to let them know who they were trying to raid," he told me.
We remained on guard at the fort for the rest of the night, but saw nothing more of the enemy. When daylight came Ki-pah had his men carry the four dead to the river and toss them into it, but not until my father and I had examined them. There was nothing on them that we wanted.
All our foodstuff was down in the lodges. We had to go there for it, and there we went, all but two, who remained to guard the horses, still in the corral. We went very slowly, guns cocked and ready, and made a complete circle of the little grove before moving into the camp.
The raiders, as we expected, had gone. The two lodges, as we also expected, were in distress. The leather coverings, low down, were full of little slits, and the arrows that had made them were sticking in our beds and elsewhere, almost as plentiful as quills on a porcupine. But none of our property was missing. The raiders, apparently, had not entered the lodges, had no doubt hurriedly left them when the firing began at the fort. Finding that the women could safely come down to the lodges, I was sent after them, and we all soon had something to eat.
Right after the meal the lodges came down, Ki-pah and Sah-kwi-ah-ki moving into the fort, we setting our lodge up right beside it; and from that morning until we left, the horses were close herded in the open bottom, my father and I taking our share of the work.
Now that the excitement was over, my father became very low-hearted. He would not allow me to go back to my fasting—my dream tree. "It is useless for him to try to get his medicine now," he told my mother. "The gods are against me because I have lost the Thunder Pipe. He would never have been disturbed out there in his tree if I had had it to use with my prayers for him."
We did not go to our beaver traps for some days; not until we were quite sure that the war party had left the country. And when we did get to them we found, of course, in every one a spoiled beaver. We reset the traps, farther up the river, then killed a young buffalo bull, my father running it with his swift horse, and as usual stopping it with a single arrow. He was a fine shot afoot and astride a horse. We went straight home with the meat, as much of it as the horse could carry along with our weight.
Since we could not return to our people, my mother and sister and I were satisfied to remain where we were. Not so my father; he longed for the company of men, and the white men were no company for him. Also, he was very unhappy over the loss of his pipe. Indeed, we all believed that it was a sign that bad luck of some kind was coming to us.
Came the day when, with the morning catch, we had the twenty beaver-skins for the saddle and three skins more. As soon as the green ones were stretched on the hoops, my father turned the whole number over to Ki-pah for the saddle and some things for my mother and sister, and then we prepared to leave in the morning for the Gros Ventres camp.
Upon learning our intention Ki-pah gave us some presents, and some to carry to the Gros Ventres chiefs. "Tell them that I have come here to stay," he said, "and that I want them to catch many beavers for trade with me."
My father was very happy that day, for Ki-pah had given him a medicine fire-maker: a thin, round, smooth piece of looks-like-ice rock of great and sacred and mysterious power. One had but to hold it a little above some fine dry grass, or wood splinters, and facing the sun, and it would draw fire from the great sky god and set the stuff ablaze. We all believed that it was even greater medicine than the lost Thunder Pipe.
And because of that we set out across the plains the next morning with the feeling that nothing bad would happen to us. And nothing did. On the second day, toward sunset, we found the Gros Ventres camp. It was pitched on the Little, or as you white men call it, Milk River, north from the west end of the Bear Paw Mountains. We rode into it, and making inquiries, found our way to Short Bow's lodge. He was the head chief, and my father's greatest friend among the men of the tribe.
Straight as we went, word had gone ahead of us of our coming. We drew up in front of the lodge, dismounted, and my father raised the door curtain to go in, when the chief came stealing around from behind and caught and embraced him, crying out: "I saw you before you did me. I give you three horses."
That was the way of it in those days. Long-parted friends tried to surprise one another, and be the first to give a present. My father was much disappointed that he had not been able to surprise his friend, and much pleased at the welcome given us.
"My lodge is your lodge. Enter, enter and rest, and feast with us," said Short Bow.
By that time his womenkind had come out and greeted my mother and sister. They began unpacking our things and helping my mother put up our lodge. I drove the horses out to good grass in the bottom, hobbled the leaders, and returned to camp.
When I got back our lodge was up, the couches made, and everything in order, and my people all in Short Bow's lodge. I joined them there, and as soon as I took my seat the women placed a big dish of meat and back fat before me.
Short Bow was a big, fine-looking man, and as kind and brave as he was big, else he never would have been head chief of the tribe. He was also a great medicine man, and his medicine was lightning fire. I knew the story of it well: In the long ago his father's father went hunting one day, carrying only three arrows in his quiver. Deer were very plentiful, but it was not until he had traveled away from camp more than half of the day that he got a shot at one, a big buck, standing a long bow-shot away. He missed it, and the flint head of the arrow, striking a rock, was shattered.
He went on and soon got another shot at the same animal, and again missed it, and look as he would, everywhere around, he never could find this, his second arrow.
He went on. Every little way a deer, or two or three, or a bunch of them, would lunge off into the thick brush before he could take good aim at them; he had but the one arrow now, and could take no chances with it.
At last, near sundown, he saw a young buck feeding on the edge of a cutbank of the river, and approached it very cautiously, for here, he thought, was his last chance of the day to get meat. He sneaked up quite close to it, the deer still grazing and unaware of his approach, and took good aim and let the arrow go, and over its back whizzed the shaft, and far out into the swift river, and was lost.
Said the man to himself: "I am a good arrow-shooter, yet have I missed three easy shots, and lost every one of my three arrows. This is a sure sign that something — perhaps something very bad — is to happen to me. It is best that I get borne as soon as I can."
He started home, did the man, walking fast, and running in the more open places of the woods. He was a long way from camp, and night brought with it black storm-clouds that soon covered the whole sky. He could not see a step ahead, and after falling three or four times over logs and stones, and at last very nearly tumbling from a cutbank into the river, he stopped to wait for starlight or the break of day. With outstretched hands and careful steps he felt his way to a big cottonwood tree and sat down under it.
Soon came the storm: much thunder and lightning and fierce wind, but of rain only a few drops, and as the man prayed the gods for protection from the storm and from the prowlers of the night, lightning suddenly struck an old dead tree close in front of him. Following the awful crash big limbs and pieces of limbs, and splinters of the tree itself, came thumping to the ground, and crashing down through the branches of surrounding trees, and on the trunk of the struck tree, dry and tattered bark that clung to it caught fire. Just a little spark of fire at first, but it grew and grew until it lighted up the whole surrounding wood, and by this light the man saw a dead deer, a big buck, lying on the ground at the foot of the struck tree. He wondered what had killed it — why the bears or wolves had not feasted upon the carcass.
And now came the rain: heavy rain, cold rain that wet and chilled him. And there was the fire, still eating up the bark on the splintered tree-trunk. Lightning, that terrible, dreadful, life-destroying weapon of the thunder-bird, had set it; therefore it was a medicine fire that man had best avoid.
But this man was very brave; also he was now shivering, trembling in his thin, wet leather clothing. Said he to himself, "I will take a little of the fire and with it build a big blaze to warm me."
And praying the gods for protection, and the thunder bird for pardon for using it, he went to the tree to tear from it a piece of the burning bark. Thus going, he came to the deer. Its wide-open eyes were as full and as natural in appearance as though it was alive. He bent over and felt of the body: it was warm and soft and yielding to his hand.
And suddenly it was all plain to him: the gods the thunder bird, had taken pity on him. They had seen him lose his three arrows and had set this fire and killed this deer for his use and comfort. No longer afraid, he took some of the burning bark and with it built a good fire under another tree. Then with his flint knife he cut meat from the body of the deer, and cooked and ate it, and felt warm and comfortable as he sat leaning against the tree-trunk and close before the fire.
The storm soon passed away, and the stars and then the moon appeared, but the man did not know it: he slept. And in his sleep his shadow, wandering, met the thunder bird, and it told him that he must always keep alive the fire that it had set for him in his need; that by so doing he would have long life and happiness.
Just before daybreak the man awoke, and as his dream had told him to do, so he did. He made a cup of moistened and well-worked clay, placed in it a piece of very rotten wood and touched a live coal to it, and then with more clay made a cover for the cup. This had a small hole in it so that the smoldering fire could breathe. Like man, my son, if fire cannot breathe, it dies. So it was that the man took home the lightning fire.
Arrived at his lodge, he ordered his women to put out the fire they had, and then with that he carried he built a fresh one. And since that day the sacred flame has lived. Its coals covered over and kept alive at night with ashes, and carried in a clay cup from camping-place to camping-place, and handed down from father to son and father to son, it has been great medicine. Every owner of it lived to great age, and each one of them was ever rich and happy. I doubt not that it lives yet in the lodge of Short Bow's son.
There! That is the story of the fire around which we sat that evening in the Gros Ventres camp. I have been particular to tell you all about it because — well, you will see the reason later.
"There! Now, tell us the news," said Short Bow, as he handed my father a fresh-lighted pipe, and leaned back on his couch.
"The news is that I have quit the Pikuni forever, that I am no longer a member of that ungrateful tribe," my father answered.
"No! Oh, no! That cannot be! It must not be so!" Short Bow cried, quickly sitting up and staring hard at all of us.
"Yes, so it is, and so it ever shall be!" said my father loudly; and he went on to tell him all about it.
When he had finished, no one spoke for a long time.
My father became impatient. "Ha! Why don't you say something?" he asked. "I thought that you would be glad that I have come to join your tribe — to be one of you."
"I told you, brother, that my lodge is your lodge," Short Bow answered. "I now say that my people are your people. We are glad to have you with us. But my advice to you is this: remain with us for a time, and then return to your people. Neither we, nor any other tribe, can be to you what the Pikuni are."
"The Pikuni are without heart. I shall never return to them. I shall remain with you," said my father.
Later in the evening, when the lodge was filled with visitors, my father told of the arrival of Ki-pah in the country, and gave the trader's message. They all said that that was the best news they had heard in a long while. They did not like to go to the mouth of the Yellowstone to trade, for that was in Sioux country, and the fort of the Red Coats was too far away in the North. Ki-pah should have their trade, they said, and they would at once begin trapping beavers for him. They all seemed to be glad that we had come to live with them.
As only a few of the Gros Ventres spoke and understood our language well, my father used signs as well as words when talking with them, so that all would know what he said. He now told of our narrow escape from the Assiniboine war party, and of the loss of his medicine pipe, and when he had finished, he got much sympathy.
Said Short Bow: "Brother, that is truly a terrible loss. What will you do without it?"
"Well, I have another medicine, one that the white trader gave me," my father answered. "It is truly a powerful medicine. I can draw fire from the sun with it. I am sure that it will help me in my prayers to the gods. And then I shall soon get back my pipe. The Assiniboines are cowards—dogs—nothing people. I shall go right into their camp and get that pipe."
A man sitting across the fire from my father laughed a low, mean, I-doubt-your-words-kind of a laugh; and everyone turned quickly to look at him. Leaning forward and speaking in a strange language, he quickly told my father in signs: "The Assiniboines are brave men; chiefs all of them. It is the Pikuni who are cowards — dogs."
And with that he got up, wrapped his robe closely about him, and walked slowly out of the lodge.
My father was so surprised that at first he could only sit still and stare at the man. Then, turning to Short Bow, he asked: "Did I hear right? Who is that man?"
"He is an Assiniboine," the chief answered. "He and his woman, afoot, came to us at the beginning of last winter. He said that he had quarreled with his people, had left them forever, and begged us to take pity on him. We did. He lives in Black Rabbit's lodge, and looks after his horses and hunts for him."
"Well, I am going to hunt him! No man can call me a dog, a coward, and then start off that way!" my father cried, and started to follow him.
"No, no, brother, no!" Short Bow exclaimed, taking him by the arm. "You must not fight him — not here, not in this camp. We gave him our protection and may not break our word."
"But he called me — the Pikuni — bad names!"
"You were the first to call names," Short Bow reminded him. "And listen. He did not give you — he gave the Pikuni — those bad names. And you say that you are no longer a member of the tribe. Well, then, what is it to you what he calls that people?"
My father had been straining away from Short Bow, impatient to arise, to follow the Assiniboine; but when the chief said that, all the strength seemed to go out of him: he sank back weakly on the couch, and was silent. For the first time, I think, he was beginning to see that he must pay for what he had done. It was true: no longer one of the Pikuni, he had no right to stand up for them. His pride was terribly hurt, and he could do nothing to wipe out the sting of the Assiniboine's words.
We soon went out and to our own lodge, and, early as it was, to bed. So ended our first evening with the Gros Ventres.
I did not sleep well. Somehow I kept thinking of our horses. In the early part of the night my dream had been about them — some trouble about them; but when I awoke I could not recall just what it was. It made me very uneasy. As soon as day began to break I quietly got up and dressed, took my gun, and went out to look for them. I went afoot; we had not picketed even one of them at the lodge, for my father said it would not be necessary: the Gros Ventres had a guard of young men out every night to protect the herds, to give warning of the approach of a war party.
Up and down the river bottoms I went and out on the plains, hurrying ever faster from herd to herd of the Gros Ventres animals in the hope that they might be ours, yet ever with the feeling — from the very start I had it — that I would not find our horses.