The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
us, in very poor Blackfoot:—
"As you are only boys, we will not kill you. Return to your chief, and tell him that we keep our beaver for ourselves, just as the plains people keep the buffalo for themselves. Now go."
There was nothing to do but obey him, and we started. One man followed us a few steps, and struck Pitamakan several blows across the back with his whip. At that my friend broke out crying; not because of the pain, but because of the terrible humiliation. To be struck by any one was the greatest of all insults; and my friend was powerless to resent it.
Looking back, we saw the Kootenays move on through the meadow and disappear in the timber. Completely dazed by our great misfortune, we mechanically took our back trail, and seldom speaking, walked on and on. When night came, rain began to fall and the wind rose to a gale in the treetops. At that Pitamakan shook his head, and said, dejectedly, "At this season rain down here means snow up on top. We must make strong medicine if we are ever to see our people again."
Hungry and without food or weapons for killing any game, wet and without shelter or any means of building a fire, we certainly were in a terrible plight. Worse still, if it was snowing on the summit, if winter had really set in, we must inevitably perish. I remembered hearing the old trappers say that winter often began in October in the Rocky Mountains; and this day was well on in November! "Pitamakan! We are not going to survive this!" I cried.
For answer, he began singing the coyote song, the Blackfoot hunter's prayer for good luck. It sounded weird and melancholy enough there in the darkening forest.
Chapter III
"There! Something tells me that will bring us good luck," said Pitamakan, when he had finished the medicine song. "First of all, we must find shelter from the rain. Let us hurry and search for it up there along 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 slightest touch. There were only a few hundred yards between us and the foot of the big wall which shot high above the tops of the pines, but by the time we arrived there night had fairly come. At this point a huge pile of boulders formed the upper edge of the slope, and for a moment we stood undecided which way to turn. "Toward home, of course!" Pitamakan exclaimed, and led the way along the edge of the boulders, and finally to the cliff. There in front of us was a small, jagged aperture, and stooping 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 smell anything?"
But I could detect no odor other than that of the dank forest floor, and said so.
"Well, I think that I smell bear!" he whispered, and we both leaped back, and then stealthily drew away from the place. But the rain was falling now in a heavy downpour; the rising wind lashed it in our faces and made the forest writhe and creak and snap. Every few moments some old 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 not lie down for their winter sleep until the snow has covered up their food. We must go back and take our chance of one being there in that hole."
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 last winter," Pitamakan added. "The scent of one sticks in a place a long time."
Although I was shivering so much from the cold and wet that my teeth rattled, I managed to say, "Come on! We've got to go in there."
Crawling inch by inch, feeling of the ground ahead, and often stopping to sniff the air and listen, we made our cautious way inside, and presently came to a fluffy heap of dried grass, small twigs and leaves that 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; they always 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 was small 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 and leaves, snuggled close together, and covered ourselves as well as we could. Little by little we stopped shivering, and after a while felt comfortably warm, although wet.
We fell to talking then of our misfortune, and planning various ways to get out of the bad fix we were in. Pitamakan was all for following the Kootenays, stealing into their camp at night, and trying to recover not only our horses, but, if possible, our rifles also. I made the objection that 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 could ride to the summit. We finally agreed to follow the trail of our enemies and have a look at their camp; we might find some way of getting back what they had taken.
We really slept well. In the morning I awoke first, and looking out, saw nothing but thick, falling snow. I nudged my companion, and together we crept to the mouth of the cave. The snow was more than a foot deep in front of us, and falling so fast that only the nearest of the big pines below could be seen. The weather was not cold, certainly not much below freezing, but it caused our damp clothing to feel like ice against the skin. We crept back into our nest, shivering again.
"With this snow on the ground, it would be useless to try to take anything 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 I asked a question, I, too, became silent. But not for long; so many fears and doubts were oppressing me that I had to speak. "We had better start on, then, and try to cross the summit."
Pitamakan shook his head slowly. "Neither we nor any one else will cross the summit until summer comes again. This is winter. See, the snow is almost 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 it over 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 low little cave his song sounded muffled and hollow enough. Had I not been watching his face, I must have soon begged him to stop, it was so mournful 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. Take courage. They have put new thoughts into me."
I asked what the thoughts were, and he replied by asking what we most needed.
"Food, of course," I said. "I am weak from hunger."
"I thought you would say that!" he exclaimed. "It is always food with white 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 say they are starving. No, brother, we do not most need food. We could go without it half a moon and more, and the long fast would only do us good."
I did not believe that. It was the common belief in those times that a person 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 of drying 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 from ours of the plains. There the snow comes and goes many times during the winter; here it only gets deeper and deeper, until the