The Sheep Eaters. Allen William Alonzo
they were, but they murmured and made signs of battle. Our people had great masses of rock as large as houses, where they could let them loose down the trail and crush the Sioux into the earth as they were all down in a deep canyon.
"The Sioux stopped and began a war council, and began to paint and get ready for battle. Our chief got the great rocks ready, and then sent a runner to tell the Sioux that our people never went into the valleys nor killed the buffalo, and that we wished to be apart from all other people. After a long council the Sioux fired a volley of arrows at our runner, and wounded him in the thigh. He came to the chief greatly alarmed at the dreaded Sioux as they were many.
"The ponies in the valley below were strange looking creatures to us; we had never seen them before. The dogs were howling and the valley rang with the wild warwhoop. The time had come for action, and the Sheep Eaters assembled at the narrow trail, headed by their chieftain, Red Eagle, with his bow six feet long, made from the mountain ram's horn, and bound with glue and sinew from the sheep's neck. Great excitement prevailed. The squaws and children had hidden among the rocks with all their robes and earthly possessions. The wild and savage Sioux knew no fear and were pressing up the narrow trail with war paint and feathers, their grim visages scowling in the sunlight as they came.
"Red Eagle, with that bravery known only to his tribe, waited until they had reached the most dangerous precipice. Then with a great lever that had been prepared years before, he loosened the great rock from its moorings, and with one crash it sped down the canyon like a cyclone, tearing the trees from their roots, and starting the rocks, until the canyon became one great earthquake. The screams of the terrified Indians, the howling of dogs and the neighing of horses were heard in one awful roar. The battle was over. The canyon was a mass of blood, and death was abroad in the valley. Not a living thing was to be seen.
"Red Eagle took a horn made of red cedar, and gave one long quivering blast which echoed and reechoed through the alps and was carried across the glaciers to every part of the mountain. Then the women and children came back and once more took shelter in their comfortable homes."
I arose and gave the old crone the balance of my lunch, and told her I was going to see that mountain some day and see their houses, but she held up her hand and said, "Away up mountain long time ago, maybe so, no tepee now."
And I went and left her sitting alone on the old tree, waiting for the Great Spirit to come take her to her tribe, over on the happy hunting ground, where scenes of warfare and savage Sioux would never molest them again. As I left her alone on the bank of the Big Horn I could not help feeling a pang of pity for the wild woman of the Rockies, whose life had been spent among the canyons, and on the streams whose waters had chiseled great passages through those granite walls centuries ago. She who was once a belle in her tribe and had lived to see the extermination of her people, and now wandered alone wishing to die and pass beyond. The earth was not to her as it had been in her youth.
I shall never forget the spell that came over me as she raised her palsied arm and showed me where she had lived a hundred years ago. Something seemed to tell me she was speaking the truth and my trip to that mountain became a living passion from that day.
CHAPTER III
THE GOLD SEEKER IN THE MOUNTAINS
On the apex of Medicine Mountain, whose rugged cliffs hold communion with the fleeting clouds, and where the winds sing dismal songs among the cedar boughs, there the forked lightnings at intervals light up the panorama and a thousand beautiful springs and waterfalls sparkle like myriads of diamonds. The mountain ash and the golden leaves of the mountain quaking asp cast their shadows to make perfect this great wonderland, whose colors are more splendid than the rainbow or the golden setting of the western sun.
Among such scenery one could live away from the gilded vices and the artificial lives of the crowded cities, and it was close to the god of nature these people lived and carved their history on the mountains and rocks, worshipped the sun because it was warm and bright, and because it lighted the narrow trail through the defiles of the mountains, across the streams and through the cool green forests, along the rugged cliffs where the horny hoofs of the elk, deer, and mountain sheep had blazed a trail so narrow and so steep that none but the Sheep Eaters dare travel its rugged heights.
Along these trails could be seen at the four seasons of the year, all of the Sheep Eaters, wending their way to the sacred shrine, the great wheel, with its gates and its gods of plenty and light. Here on an elevated spur a thousand feet above the Porcupine Basin, standing out to the east, is a great look-out, where the great sun dial with its twenty-eight spokes representing the twenty-eight tribes of the Sheep Eaters, overlooking the great Grey Bull country, the Ten Sleep Mountains and the Teton Peaks sweeping down toward the Big Horn Canyon. There the Grey Bull and Wind River and Sage Creek are sweeping through Big Horn Canyon, with its chiseled walls, more than a third of a mile in height, and its serpentine trail fifty-two miles into the Big Horn River, and thence into the Yellowstone and Missouri and on to the ocean.
Here nature's god had spread with lavish hand the richest and the greatest blessings to the Sheep Eaters. The buffalo down in the valleys, the antelope on the plains, the gazelle along the streams, and the elk, black-tail and big horn on the mountains, the mountain grouse, and the streams filled with trout, camas root for bread, cherries, raspberries, and strawberries, made a Garden of Eden for these people until a thousand years had passed, and the tribes increased to twenty-eight before the onward march of the Sioux across and beyond the Mississippi and Missouri brought them into the Sheep Eaters' country.
Around the base of these mountains were many alluring deposits of gold, and small gold camps had started at Fire Springs, Bear Creek and on the east and west forks of the historical Little Big Horn, all in or near the beautiful Porcupine Basin. But the alluring grains of the precious metal could not be found in paying quantities and the miners had quietly packed their plunder and "hiked the trail" to more plentiful paying "diggins."
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