––––––––
OH, how frightened we were! The three of us stopped singing. "Keep on! If you would live, sing!" my father hissed at us, and somehow we obeyed him. With one eye on what he was doing and the other on the enemy, we went on with the song, although awful fear was in our hearts. And as we sang my father four times extended his hands to the medicine instrument, the fourth time removing its last wrapping and holding it up at arm's length above his head.
The song came to an end and he cried out: "Oh, you ancient one, my dream, help me! Oh, you sun, and all you gods of earth and sky, have pity on us! I purify myself before you, I offer you sweet-smelling smoke!" And with that he got the ice-rock takes-fire-from-the-sun to the right position, and first smoke arose from the ball of fuel, and then it burst into flame.
I was watching such of the war party as I could see, and one man in particular who stood nearest of all to my father. He was a big, fine-looking man, well dressed and carrying a beautiful shield, and an otter-skin case for bow and arrows. He stood with arms folded, a war club in his right hand, and looked down upon my father with a queer smile on his face, a smile that I thought meant: "We are just waiting to see the end of this foolishness, and then the end for you."
But when the ball of shredded bark burst into flame he gave a loud cry of surprise, and pointed to it and said something to his companions, and following him, they all sat down on each side — and in front of us.
My father continued to act as though he had not seen them. He reached out and took handfuls of the sweet smoke and rubbed himself with it, and then prayed long to the sun to keep us from all danger; to give us long life and plenty and much happiness.
I cannot tell you all my thoughts at that time. I was so frightened that they were all mixed up. I remember praying my own four ancient ones for help, and wondering in what way this war party would take our lives? It did not come to me then how brave, how very brave, my father was to keep on making medicine in the face of the enemy. Few men could have done it.
Well, the little fire burned out, the last of the sweet-grass smoke drifted away with the wind, the prayer came to an end. My father picked up the four pieces of buckskin with which to wrap up the medicine instrument.
"Hail!" called out the man with the war club.
My father looked up.
The man pointed to the instrument, and said in signs: "Let me take it. I want to examine it."
"I cannot do that," my father signed back. "This is a powerful thing. It is one with the sun. You shall know that. Hold out your hand."
The man did as he was told, and my father took it, held it palm up, with his right hand lowering the ice-rock instrument over it until it made just a fine, bright spot of light on the skin.
"Ha!" cried the man, and drew his hand away with a jerk and examined the burned place, and said something to his companions, whereat they all clapped hands to mouths in surprise, and then talked much among themselves. My father wrapped up the instrument and placed it in the sack in which he kept it.
He of the war club and the burned hand watched him, and when it was put away he said, in signs, of course: "We were down there in the timber and saw you coming. We talked together and made up our minds to kill you and take your horses. We now have different hearts: let us be friends."
"Oh, good," half-whispered my mother, sitting beside me. "Oh, I hope that he speaks with one tongue."
"He does. He is afraid of us: he thinks that we have sun power," I told her. And as it turned out, I was right.
My father meantime answered: "Yes. That is good. We are friends."
"We are Cheyennes. What are you?" the man asked.
"In back time I was one of the Pikuni," my father answered, "but I quit them. We are now just ourselves, the four of us. We go south to find the Crows, and set up our lodge with them."
"The Crows are bad hearts. Best you go to my people. Tell them that you met me, Wolf Spotted, and I sent you to them. They have good hearts, they will be your friends."
"I will think about it. Where are your people?"
"They camp and hunt in the Black Hills, on the streams that run into the Big River. You can easily find them," the man answered.
"All is well with us. Cook meat," said my father; and my mother and sister began opening the parfleches. The war party — there were fifteen of them — went down into the far end of the timber and, returning with meat, built a fire of their own and started cooking.
The chief remained with my father and the two talked of many things. The Cheyenne said that he was taking his party on a raid against the across-the-mountains tribes, more to see what their country was like than anything else. "But of course they will pay us for looking at it," he said, and laughed loud and long.
We did not any of us sleep on that day. All seemed to be well with us, but we could not be sure of it: we were afraid of the war party. They slept all the afternoon. I remained out with the horses and kept my gun ready for anything that might happen. I watched the sun's slow travel and wished that he would hurry home to his lodge: I wanted packing-up time to come; to be on my horse and riding out from the river. Not until then should I be sure that the Cheyennes intended us no harm.
Just before sunset I drove in the horses and tied those that we were to ride and pack. My mother roasted more meat and the Cheyenne chief again ate with us, and again urged us to go down into the Black Hills and live with the Cheyennes. My father replied that he would think about it; that if he should go, he would rather wait until the chief should return home, so that we should be sure to be well received.
Came now packing-up time. I saddled the horses, my sister and mother put on their loads, attached to them the lodge poles and the two travoys, and we were ready to start. So were the Cheyennes. The chief embraced my father, and then we all got into the saddle.
My father led off, telling us to follow and not look back. We obeyed him, but our backs shivered. We wanted to see what was going on behind us; if the war party was about to stick us full of arrows. Nothing happened. We soon passed out of the timber and crossed the river, and began climbing the long slope to the plains. Then we did look back: the Cheyennes were going up the long, open bottom above the place where we had spent the day. They had not meant to kill us. We were glad to have escaped the great danger that we all wanted to sing.
My father was cheerful for the first time since we had parted from the Pikuni: "I knew all the time that Short Bow was mistaken," he said. "My ice-rock takes-fire-from-the-sun instrument is medicine: great medicine. I used it at just the right time: the Cheyennes would have killed us all but for their fear of its wonderful power."
"Lone Bull, my man, you were brave to keep right on making medicine when the party surprised us," said my mother. "I don't see how you could have done it."
"Why, it was easy," my father answered hen "Something—my secret helper—warned me to do so. True, I was at first afraid that they would kill us, but when they waited until I lighted the sweet-grass I knew that there would be no killing."
We did not travel far that night, for we were very tired and sleepy. We soon came to It-Crushed-Them-Creek, and in the pines at the head of it we lay down and slept until morning, and then, by turns, through most of the day. Toward evenings while we were eating the meat that my mother had cooked for us, she told how the creek had got its name. Not far above the mouth of it was a streak of red-brown, sacred paint earth at the bottom of a high cutbank, and, having found it, the Pikuni went there every summer to dig out enough to last them until another summer. Each time they went there they had to dig farther and farther into the bank; that weakened it, but they kept gouging farther and farther into it, and one day, what the old men had predicted happened: down came a great piece of the cutbank, burying under it forever three of the women. After that no one ever dug paint there, and what had been Paint Creek, became It-Crushed-Them-Creek.
Leaving that camp, we arrived next morning at the foot of the Black Butte, and remained there for the day, seeing nothing whatever to alarm us. It was as though we four were the only people on the earth and the first that the animals had ever seen. It was a part of their great hunting-ground that the Pikuni seldom used, my father told us, mainly because all war parties passing through the country came to the Black Butte to look out upon the wide plains from its summit. They came, they went, killing only now and then an animal for food, and so it was that the game that lived there — the deer and antelopes, elk and bighorn and buffalo had little fear of man.
I had the afternoon watch. When it was nearly time for me to awake the others, I strung my bow — taking it in preference to my gun because it was noiseless, and started out to kill some meat. I had not far to go: during the afternoon I had seen band after band of various kinds of game come from all directions into a coulée just above our resting-place, and then scatter out again, and I knew that there was one of their watering-places.
I went up there and saw the spring, a big, long, deep pool with smooth rock shores. Trails led to it from up and down the coulée, and from each side, these last worn deep into the earth of the slopes.
I hid in the sage-brush at the edge of one of these side trails, where I could look right down into it, and had no more than taken my place when I saw a band of antelopes coming, a big buck in the lead. I remained motionless, crouching in the brush, until he was right under me, and then sprang up and shot an arrow down at him with all the strength of my arms. He leaped high up and far forward and fell. Those pressing close behind turned and fled. My arrow, all red-stained, lay on the ground beside the trail: it had missed the rib bones and gone clear through him. I was very proud of myself when I saw what I had done; I felt that I had the strength of arm and sureness of aim of a grown man.
I jumped down into the trail, sharpened my knife-blade against a smooth, flat stone, and began butchering the antelope. I had one side of it skinned down to the back when I heard a snuffling and blowing of nose and a smacking of sticky lips back in the sage-brush above the trail. I knew what it was: a bear. I had to make a couple of jumps to get my bow, and when I got it in hand and raised up, there was old sticky-mouth right over me at the edge of the cut trail, and oh, what a big one he was!
I turned and ran down the trail, past the spring and up the other side of the coulée, and then looked back: the bear had his fore paws on my antelope and was tearing off big mouthfuls of the ribs. I ran back to camp and aroused my father, and we hurried with our guns in a roundabout way to the place from which I had shot the antelope. The bear was still eating and never looked up. My father fired and I did. Both balls tore through his heart; he fell right on the antelope and made a few kicks and died. Oh, how glad we were!
We rolled the bear off from the antelope, finished skinning it, and took what we wanted of the meat. Then my father considered taking a strip of the bear's skin while we were cutting off its claws. It was true, he said, that he had not now the Thunder Pipe, but he was soon going to get it back; in the meantime he had a powerful medicine, the ice-rock takes-fire-from-the-sun instrument, and he could wrap it in the strip until he got the pipe. And so deciding, he cut a wide strip of hide from the whole length of the bear's back, and we took it and the meat to camp.
We were all very happy that evening at the Black Butte. We had had a day of good rest and good success. We packed up and went on, keeping to the big trail that runs along the foot of the Snowy Mountains.
The sun was just rising when we came to the brakes of the Musselshell. As we descended the slope we saw that here the cherries were already ripe, the branches of the little trees bending low with the weight of the fruit. My mother and Nitaki wanted to stop right then and gather some, but my father would not allow it.
"We must get down into the cover of the timber at once," he said. "This evening, if all is well, you shall come back here and fill a couple of parfleches with the fruit."
We grabbed here and there a handful of the cherries as we rode down the hill. They tasted good in our dry and thirsty mouths; it was hard for us to go on and leave such good food.
We stopped in a fine grove of cottonwoods at the edge of the river, and while my mother and sister made a fire and roasted some of the antelope meat, my father and I examined the trails in the timber and the shores of the river. Footprints there were in them, tracks as plentiful as the grass, but none of human feet. Nor were there anywhere old fireplaces: it was as though Crows nor Pikuni nor any other tribe had ever camped there.
After our morning meal I took the watch and the others slept. There was good feed in the timber and I easily kept the horses there. I often went all along the edge of the grove, looking out at the open bottom and the valley slopes; from the plains on both sides the buffaloes came down to the river to drink and stood long in the cool water or wandered out in it to lie down or slowly graze their way back up on the plains. There were many bear tracks in the trails, some very large and quite fresh, I kept a watch-out for the makers of them, but saw none: the morning was so hot that they were not moving.
My father took my place in the middle of the day, and then I slept, but not so long as usual. My mother and Nitaki were thinking of those cherries, anxious to be gathering them. They woke me up and asked if I thought it was time to go up on the slope. I went out into the timber and found my father, and asked him. He said that it was pretty early for that, but that I could go with him to the rim of the plain, and if all was well we could signal the impatient ones to come up. Before we started I caught a horse for my mother and one for my sister, for they intended to gather more fruit than they could carry: they wanted a lot of it to pound up and dry for winter use.
Arrived at the rim of the plain, my father and I looked out at the country a long time before giving the signal, for we wanted to be sure that there was no war party approaching. When, at last, I did get up and wave my robe, I could not see my mother and sister, as it was some distance down into the timber where they were.
But they were out in the edge of it and watching us, and soon came riding up to the thorny thickets. We joined them. The fruit tasted even better than in the morning: much sweeter, we thought. We ate plenty of it, and then began filling the parfleches, my father helping us. That made my mother laugh: it is not often that one sees a warrior gathering fruit for drying.
A yell from my sister startled us all. We turned and looked down where she was pointing: a lone rider was driving our horses down the valley as fast as he could go. They were too far away for us to see them plainly, but there could be no doubt but they were our horses. The stealer had herded them along in the shelter of the timber and the willows and cutbanks bordering the river for a long way before taking to the open bottom.
We could hardly believe our eyes. It did not seem possible that such bad luck had come to us. We just stood and stared and stared. And then my father called out to me to mount a horse.
I jumped on to the one that my sister had ridden up, my father on to the other. But we went only a little way in the women's saddles: they were too short; the high, straight rise of them jabbed us in stomach and back most painfully. We stopped and dismounted, and tore them off, and went on. From the very start we knew that it was useless to go on: these two horses that I had caught up for my mother and sister were both slow old pack-animals, their legs stiff with age. We kept on down the valley, however, pounding their flanks with our heels, jabbing their ribs with our gun-stocks, and hoping and praying, oh, so hard, that something would happen to enable us to overtake that lone enemy.
On and on we went. On down the valley, and then out of it to the east, and at the rim of the plain gave up. Herd and rider were then so far ahead of us that they were just small specks against the blue as they topped a ridge. We watched them go over it and out of sight, and turned back whence we had come.
My father rode ahead, all bent over and silent. I felt worse than I ever had in all my life. Those were my horses. I had worked hard for them. I loved them; was proud of them; and they were gone from me forever. I may as well tell you that on the way back to camp I cried.
My mother and sister met us at the edge of the grove and silently followed us into our camping-place. There we made another discovery: the enemy had gone all through our things, and had taken my father's medicine sack, in which was the ice-rock takes-fire-from-the-sun instrument, and his saddle; and the bow and arrows and beautiful case that White Wolf had given me were also missing. My father said nothing, and went away on the bank of the river and sat down. My mother began to sort over our things, trying to make up her mind what to take and what to leave. Not counting the lodge and lodge poles, there were eight pack-loads of it all, and we could take but two loads, and must ourselves go on foot wherever we were going.
For the time it was more than my mother could stand: the laying aside of the different things that she had long owned and loved and must now lose. She came over and sat down beside me and cried. My sister cried. I was myself almost crying again.
Presently my father came to us: "Well," he said, "the sun sets. Let us pack up and be going on."
"Oh, no, no!" my mother cried out. "Let us not go on! Let us turn back! Let us go to our people, where we belong! Oh, my man! Can't you now see that the gods are against you—that they have been more and more against you since the day we left the Pikuni? First you lost the Thunder Pipe; now your other medicine is gone; gone the horses that your son worked so hard to buy. Think how helpless we are: afoot in a country full of war parties. Oh, take back your words! Let us start right now for the camp of our people."
I was watching my father while she spoke. He listened; he was considering her words; I thought that he was going to do what she asked.
And then he suddenly cried out: "No, no! We can't go back! We have to go on! Poor, and on foot, my medicine gone, I could not go back to the Pikuni. We have to go on, I tell you. I will take you to the Crows, and then again go to the Assiniboine camp after my horses and my pipe."
His words gave me some hope. It was not now anger against the Pikuni that kept him from returning to them, I thought. It was shame; shame that we, who had always been so rich, were now so poor. I said to myself that if I could only get together another band of horses, it would not be hard to persuade him to take us back to our people.
It was hard to choose what to take, what to leave: everything that we had was valuable to us. We took the lodge, without the poles; our clothing, some robes, my mother's tanning implements, the ammunition for our guns, and two yellow metal kettles that we had bought of the Red Coat traders of the North for forty beaver-skins. These we loaded on to the two horses. We did not try to cache the rest of the things; we just abandoned them and struck out for the south.
We all took off our moccasins when we came to the river and waded across it. On the far side I got mine on first, and while waiting for the rest I back-trailed a man's fresh footprints that were there in the sand. I could trace them only to the timber, but I went on into it and found a pair of worn-out moccasins where the man had lain and watched us at our camp across the river. I picked them up and examined them, and knew them. There was no mistaking that odd design of red and blue and yellow porcupine quill work, three bands across each upper: one of the men in the Cheyenne war party had worn them.
I took them out to the shore and showed them to my father. He did not remember having noticed them, but my mother did, and described the man who had worn them: tall, slender, and very long-haired, the ends of the braids wound with otter fur.
"Oh, well, what does it matter just what he is like?" said my father. "He followed us and got what he was after. We must have been blind not to have discovered him on our trail."
"I do not think that he followed us with the consent of his chief," I said.
"No, I am sure he didn't," my mother answered. "That chief is a good man. He meant well by us."
My father gave an angry laugh. "A good man, they say!" he cried. "I say that he sent his best runner, his most careful trailer, after us to get my medicine. Well, someday I may meet that chief again."
We were now afoot for the first time in all our lives. For my father and me it was not hard to walk on and on through the night. But my mother and sister suffered; their feet soon became sore; their strength went fast from them. By the time the Seven Persons marked the middle of the night they were just staggering along behind my father and me with the horses. And then Nitaki began to cry; she sat down on the ground and said she could walk no farther.
"Then you shall ride!" my father exclaimed, and told me to help him.
We took half the load from the horse he was leading, and put it on the other one, and then set my sister on top of the small load. Both horses groaned under the weight of their packs as we started on. I said to myself that everything we had anything to do with suffered.
It is a long way from the bend of the Musselshell across to the Yellowstone: a very long way when one is afoot and the rain pools are all dried up. When morning came we were still a long way from the river of the Crows, and so thirsty—my father and I more than the others—that we could hardly speak. My throat felt as though it had been sprinkled with sand.
My mother spoke to me, and I could not answer loud enough for her to hear my words. She suddenly raised her hands toward the rising sun and cried out: "O Sun, have pity. O Great Sun, world-ruler, have pity. Change the heart of this man of mine so that my children be not made to suffer so much."
My father, hearing, stood with bowed head and said not one word. He soon started on and we wearily followed him. Away to the south we could see the brakes of the Yellowstone, and beyond it the wide valley of the Bighorn River. It was nearly noon when we approached the rim of the plain. "Only a little way farther, and then we will go down the hill to the river and drink and bathe," I thought.
And just then a lone rider appeared on the rim, stopped his horse and looked at us, and then went back under the rim. We had all stopped to watch him, but the instant he went out of sight we started on. What did it matter whether we died from want of water or from the attack of the enemy?