"Wake, brother, wake!"
The words rang faintly in my ears. Mingled with them was a peculiar underlying sound. "Pop! Pop! Pop!" it went, and rippled off into the noise a wood fire makes when it is burning merrily.
I was conscious of being shaken, resented it, tried to pull away—and reluctantly awoke. Tawannears was bending over me, clutching my shoulder. His face showed relief as I sat erect.
"Otetiani slept as though he were already in the Halls of the Honochenokeh," he said. "Hark!"
Stupefied as I was, I realized that the peculiar sound which had helped to rouse me from the slumber of exhaustion was the steady crackle of musketry.
"Black Robe!" I exclaimed.
Tawannears shook his head.
"It may be so, but the firing is not at us, brother. Come, let us join Corlaer."
I stood up, musket in hand, and for the first time was aware of the soreness of muscle, joint and sinew. Every inch of my body seemed to cherish its special ache or twinge.
"We are in no condition for fighting," I remarked glumly.
"The warrior fights when he must," returned Tawannears sententiously. "Hasten, brother. Corlaer waits us."
I climbed after him toward the top of the bank where I could barely see the Dutchman's big form huddled in the grass that grew as high as our waists. The sun was declining in the western sky. The wind was negligible. The Mississippi, behind us, was as calm as a ditch-pond, and in the clear, warm sunlight the opposite shore looked absurdly near. It was difficult to believe that our battle to cross it had ended only that morning.
From the crest of the bank an entirely different prospect appeared. Crawling into the grass beside Peter, Tawannears and I peered cautiously over its rustling tips to the wall of the low wood in which Black Kobe had vanished. This wood was half a mile distant. Between it and the river-bank stretched an open meadow. Another half-mile to our left a few scattered clumps of bushes denoted the bank of the Missouri. We were ensconced upon one side of a triangle of land at the intersection of the two rivers, and it was obvious that the fighting going on under cover of the wood was working down into this open triangle. Apparently one body of men were seeking to drive a second body into thecul de sacof the triangle.
Even as my mind formulated this theory there was a flash of color on the edge of the wood and a figure darted into the open. It was an Indian, a tall man, wearing a headdress of feathers such as I had never seen before, a bonnet that encircled the head and reached down between his shoulders, giving him an exaggerated effect of height. He leaped back behind a tree as we watched, fitted an arrow to his bow and loosed it into the recesses of the wood. Then he turned and ran. He had not covered a dozen yards when a shot was fired, and he bounded high in air and fell upon his face.
Other men, similarly dressed, leaped into view, pausing momentarily to take advantage of the last cover of the wood to loose their arrows against whoever was pursuing them. There must have been a score of them, I suppose, all fine, tall warriors, naked but for breechclout, moccasins and headdress; and they ran like antelope across our range of vision. From the wood came occasional reports and a second man plunged to the ground. We heard a shrill yelping.
"Dakota," granted Tawannears.
"What does it mean?" I asked.
He pushed his musket into position.
"Be patient, brother. Let us see what happens next."
Other figures broke from the wood, whooping and firing after the fleeing Dakota, who, their bows hopelessly out-ranged, made no attempt at resistance, but raced for the protection of the Missouri bank.
"Chippewa!" squeaked Corlaer.
Tawannears nodded, frowning.
"They are the war-party who crossed the Great River ahead of us," he agreed. "What shall we do, brothers? The Chippewa are allies of the French. Corlaer and Tawannears have spent many months in the teepees of the Dakotas. But the odds are heavy against our Dakota brothers. If we cast our lot with them we may lose our own scalps."
"We are in sore danger, no matter which way we turn," I retorted. "The Chippewa would show us no mercy at any time. I am for aiding the Dakota. If we can save them they will be all the more eager to help us on our venture, as you suggested before."
"Ja," assented Corlaer. "Andt we gife dose Chippewa a surprise, eh?"
"We must give them Death," answered Tawannears grimly.
He made good his words as he spoke; and I brought down a second man. Corlaer waited until I had almost finished reloading, and secured two men in a row for target, hitting one in the shoulder and drilling the other through the body. Firing at ease, with our guns in rest, we could not miss; and the Chippewa, with howls of rage, promptly went to cover in the long grass.
This marked the initiation of a second phase of the engagement. The Chippewa were excellent marksmen, and when Corlaer took his second shot they deluged him with bullets that dug up the sods around him and sent him rolling down the bank, spitting dirt out of his mouth. Tawannears and I slid after him, deeming discretion preferable to valor.
If our fusillade had astonished the Chippewa it had been equally disconcerting to the Dakota. They did not know what to make of it. At first they seemed to fear a trap, but when they marked the furious discharge of their enemies that drove us over the bank they evidently decided we must be friends, and struck off from their line of flight at right angles so as to accommodate a union of forces with us.
We, on our part, were concerned to effect this union and at the same time compel the Chippewa to hold off long enough to permit us an opportunity to concert a plan of strategy with the Dakota band. So after trotting a rod down-river we reclimbed the bank and poured a second volley into the line of Chippewa, whose crouching figures were only half-concealed by the waving grass-tips. Before they could shift their aim from the position we had formerly occupied we had slid down the bank and were making for a new vantage-point.
By means of such tactics we were able to force the Chippewa to an advance as slow as it was cautious, for they dared not expose themselves unduly after the punishment we had inflicted in the beginning, and we secured time to work down river to where the remnants of the Dakota band hugged the protection of the bank, arrows notched, and curious glances mirroring the suspicion they still entertained of such unexpected rescuers. But their suspicion faded as we came close enough for them to identify Tawannears and the immense body of the Dutchman.
Their chief, a sinewy giant of forty, with a high-beaked nose and keen, direct gaze, his headdress of golden eagle's feathers, stepped forward to greet us, a light of welcome on his face; and both my friends exclaimed at sight of him.
"Do you know him?" I panted eagerly.
"He is Chatanskah*, Chief of the Wahpeton Council Fire," answered Tawannears briefly. "Many a buffalo he has stalked with Corlaer and Tawannears."
* White Hawk.
Chatanskah exchanged a few curt sentences with Tawannears, who nodded agreement with what he said, and then led his warriors at a dead run toward the junction of the two rivers—the apex of the triangle over which this fighting ranged. The Seneca motioned for us to follow them.
"Haste, brothers!" he urged. "We must trick the Chippewa. It is Chatanskah's plan to seek the protection of the wood where it approaches the Missouri bank, nearly opposite here."
But this was not so easy of accomplishment as it sounded. The Chippewa soon appreciated our intent, and we had not doubled the apex of the blunt promontory, with its glacis of mudflats, when they tumbled over the Mississippi bluff and pelted us with lead. Others headed across the meadow which constituted the heart of the triangle, thinking to cut us off as we bounded its outer edge, but Tawannears, Corlaer and I crawled to the top of the Missouri bluff and drove them to cover again. And at last, by dint of this and similar desperate ploys, we were enabled to scramble up the Missouri bank in the rear of our allies and dash across a narrow belt of grass land into the green shelter of the wood, a shower of balls slicing the boughs about our shoulders.
There we were reasonably safe, and Tawannears explained the situation to us whilst the Dakota produced meat from their pouches, and we snatched a hasty meal as the evening shadows lengthened.
"This wood runs west and north for a mile," he said. "Beyond it the country is all open, buffalo grazing-ground where the Dakota were hunting when the Chippewa surprised them this afternoon. It is Chatanskah's counsel that we hold the wood until it is dark when he can afford to risk taking to the prairie. The Dakota villages are a long day's——"
He was interrupted by the resumption of the Chippewa's attack. They had massed their men behind the Missouri bank in front of us, and fired into the wood as rapidly as they could load and reload. Bullets "phutted!" into the trees, swished through the branches and whistled in the air. I was long to remember the sinister song they sang, for years were to pass before I was again obliged to stand up to the battering of musketry. The racket was awesome, yet it achieved remarkably little harm. One of the Dakota abandoned shelter to loose an arrow and sagged to the ground with a bullet in his lungs. Otherwise we were scathless so far.
The firing increased in volume. It became a hell of fury, and we could hear the Chippewa yelling encouragement to one another. Smoke clouds billowed out from the bank in thick, cottony puffs, and suddenly Chatanskah screeched a warning. The smoke clouds seemed to vomit forth low-running figures, musket in one hand, tomahawk in the other. But this was a chance for which Tawannears, Peter and I had been waiting, and we made our shots count. Our allies, too, were not dismayed. In the smoky dusk, at such short distances, the bow was on more than equal terms with the musket.
The Chippewa did not dare to stop to reload. They were obliged to rely upon the covering fire of the half-dozen comrades who had remained behind the bank, and these found it impossible to aim because of the heavy smoke that the dying wind could not disperse. The Dakota bows boomed with savage joy. All around us I heard the tense, twanging hum of the strings, the prolonged "his-ss-s-tsst!" of the arrows. Out in the open men tossed their arms aloft and dropped with arrows in their bowels, or fell kicking and coughing, pierced in the throat, or went straight over backward with a bunch of feathers standing up just over their hearts.
The attack faltered and gave ground, and the Dakota warriors burst from the wood. Two of them collapsed before a ragged volley from the river-bank, but there was no stopping them. They swept over the field with tomahawk and scalping-knife, and their arrows drove the surviving Chippewa out upon the mudflats, where they would have followed if Chatanskah had not called them in, fearful of an ambuscade in the gathering darkness.
That was a proud night for the Dakota band. The youngest warrior counted coup, for the Chippewa had lost two-thirds of their number. But what pleased our new friends the most was not their tale of scalps, but the eighteen French firelocks that were theirs for lifting from the ground. It was the biggest haul of war-booty their tribe had ever taken, of incalculable military value, as the future was soon to show. Moreover, that battle in the triangle between the two rivers, obscure though it was, became famous in the annals of the plains tribes, as proving that under favorable circumstances they could stand up to the forest tribes from the east side of the Mississippi, despite the better arms of the forest warriors. And many chiefs, who up to that time had concentrated their efforts upon stealing horses, branched out into elaborate schemes for procuring musketry.
Weary as his men were—and we no less than they—Chatanskah would not allowed them to camp on the scene of their victory. Loaded with the spoil, which was considerable, including, besides the muskets, their enemies' equipment of powder-horns and shot-pouches, knives, tomahawks and other weapons, the band trotted through the wood and out upon the open prairie beyond. With the rising moon to light them they headed inland from the Missouri, bearing northwest by the stars, and doggedly maintained the pace until I guessed it to be midnight. Then Chatanskah consented to make camp, without fires, and set guards for the balance of the night. Tawannears offered to have us take our share of this duty, but the Dakota chief would not hear of it.
"What?" he exclaimed. "Shall a guest be asked to wait upon himself? Chatanskah and his warriors were as good as dead men when Tawannears and his white brothers came to their rescue. We owe you our lives. And now you shall sit in the center of my teepee. My squaws shall wait upon you. My young men shall hunt you game. Our old men shall tell you stories of the long-ago. If you will stay with us we will find you maidens to suit your eyes and we will make strong medicine to turn the white brothers red, and you shall become chiefs of the Dakota. Then the tribe will prosper and grow mighty in war."
His eyes gleamed as he conjured up that picture of prowess.
"That is a plan worth considering, my brother of the Hodenosaunee," he went on. "We will raid the Chippewa, the Miami, the Potawotomi, the Illinois, the Shawnee for guns. We will steal horses from the Spaniards and the tribes below the Missouri. We will grow great, brother."
"My brother forgets," Tawannears answered gently. "When I was among the Dakota before I told of a search I had undertaken."
"True," the Dakota assented, crestfallen. "And does Tawannears still pursue that search?"
"Yes, brother. My white brothers go with me. We seek the Land of Lost Souls, which the old tales of my people say is beyond the sunset."
The Dakota shrugged his powerful shoulders.
"It may be. My people know nothing of it."
Tawannears hesitated, and I who knew him so well, recognized that he dreaded to press the question. But his will triumphed over his spiritual fear.
"Has Chatanskah asked any warriors from afar if they know of the Land of Lost Souls?"
"Chatanskah never forgets a promise to a friend," returned the Dakota. "Many times I have spoken with the brothers of the Dakota Council-fires that stretch toward the Sky Mountains. What is beyond those mountains they do not know. This land you speak of may be there. But they do not know. No warrior has ever gone far across the mountains and returned. A large band dies of hunger and thirst. A few warriors are killed by the people of the rocky places."
"Yet Tawannears and his white brothers will go there," the Seneca declared.
"If you go, you will die," replied Chatanskah. "It will be much better to stay with Chatanskah and become a great chief."
"Nevertheless Tawannears must go on," insisted Tawannears. "My brother of the Dakota has said that he owes us his life. Will he pay the debt he owes by aiding us on our way?"
The Dakota bowed his head.
"Chatanskah may not deny what Tawannears and his white brothers ask. You shall come with us to our villages, and rest awhile. Our squaws will repair your moccasins. You shall grow fat and strong, for it is easy to see that you have traveled hard and gone hungry. Afterward, if you still ask it, Chatanskah and his young men will take you west to our brothers of the Teton Council Fire, and they shall guide you to the foot of the Sky Mountains.
"And now let Tawannears sleep in peace. Chatanskah will watch."
But hours later I was aroused by a cold wind that blew from the north, and I sat up to find Tawannears sitting with his chin on his knees, his arms wrapped around his ankles, his eyes on the star-flecked western sky. On his face was that terrible expression of exaltation which I had seen there many times before, a look of brooding anticipation, of fearful expectancy, as of one who hopes to see, but dreads the test.
It was an eery moment betwixt the night and the dawn. The wind clashed overhead and the stars seemed to stoop earthward. There was a feeling of unheard voices chanting behind the sky. I remembered the agony I had known, that I was now fleeing from. And without cause or reason I felt my heart leap in my breast, and the wells of sorrow seemed to empty and dry up. But a voice whispered out of nowhere:
"Alone! Alone! Alone!"
Yet I was not dismayed. I was alone, yes. But memories flocked forward to draw the sting from the word.
Memory! That was the key to it, I saw. Out of memory a man might whittle a new life, a club to shatter loneliness.
I probed the dark corners of my mind to test the theory, dragged forward thoughts and recollections which once must have set all my nerves ajangling. And now they fell into orderly sequence, suffered themselves to be arrayed and rearrayed, tabulated and put back whence they had come. From some of them I had pleasure. From some a stab of pain. But I was always their master. My grief was cured. My mind was again my own.
I spoke softly to Tawannears.
"My brother has not slept?"
He turned sad eyes upon me.
"No, Tawannears thinks of the past—and the hopelessness of the future. But what is this?" He bent toward me. "Otetiani's eyes are clear. The Evil Spirit no longer clouds his face."
"I have found peace, brother," I said simply.
A sudden flame of inner light burned the dejection from his face.
"Otetiani has saved Tawannears from himself. Hawenneyu has spoken. Hanegoategoh has lost his grip. The future is hope, brother."
He lay down where he was and was instantly asleep.
Chatanskah's village was a group of buffalo-hide teepees on the bank of a creek flowing into the Missouri, constituting with several similar communities the Wahpeton Council Fire. This was one of the seven divisions, or sub-tribes, of the Dakota, who held the north bank of the Missouri as far as the foothills of the Sky Mountains, and whose political organization, in some ways, reminded me of the great Iroquois Confederacy, an opinion which Tawannears also entertained.
There was about these sons of the open savannahs the same sturdy self-reliance and classic dignity which marked the People of the Long House, dwelling beneath the shadow of the primeval forest which covered most of the Wilderness country east of the Mississippi. They were all big men, lithely-muscled, handsome, with clean-cut, intelligent features, fearless warriors, clever hunters, splendid orators. Like the Iroquois, too, they had conceived the advantages of union, and were consequently feared by all the neighboring tribes.
We had dwelt with them upwards of a week, resting from the fatigue of our recent adventures, when a party of young men came in with news of the approach of a gigantic herd of buffalo from the north. The end of Summer was at hand, and the herds ranging north were beginning to turn back for the southward migration to the Spanish countries, an event of the utmost importance for the Dakota, for whom the buffalo furnished the staples of existence.
They fed largely upon its flesh. They clad themselves in its fur. They wove rope from its hair. Its dung they used for fuel in a country nearly destitute of wood. From its sinews they devised bow-strings. Its horns were employed for weapons or to strengthen their bows or for containers.
For them the buffalo represented the difference between hunger and repletion, between cold and warmth, between nakedness and protection—as it did for all the surrounding tribes, for hundreds of thousands of wild, free-roving people, inhabiting a country equal to the area of western Europe. And the buffalo was most valuable in the late Summer or Fall, after it had fattened for months upon the juicy grasses of the boundless savannahs, and its fur was grown long and silky in preparation for the Winter.
There was a flurry of preparation amongst the teepees, and as every man counted, we volunteered to accompany the hunting party, which Chatanskah mustered within the hour. The second day we came upon isolated bunches of buffalo, but the chief would not permit his warriors to attack them, claiming, with reason, that if the animals continued in their present direction they would pass close by the village, and might be attended to by the home-stayers. The third day we saw several large herds of many thousands each, but the young men who had brought the news of the migration claimed that the main herd was yet ahead of us.
We proved this true the next morning when the prairies showed black under the migratory hordes. North and west they filled the landscape. Eastward they stretched for a bare half-mile, and Chatanskah hastened to lead his hunters across the front of the serried columns, so as to be able to attack the herd in flank and maintain a constant forward pressure. No man would have cared to attempt to stop in front of that animal mass. Their hoofs shook the ground, and a slight haze of dust rose over them.
To gain our flanking position we were compelled to dip into the bed of a small creek shaded by dwarf trees, and we followed this for perhaps a quarter of a mile. Coming out into the open again, an entirely different spectacle presented itself. Bearing down upon the herd from the northeast appeared a second party of warriors fully as numerous as our own. Exclamations broke from the Dakota ranks, and although at that distance the strangers looked to me no different from our allies, none of Chatanskah's men were in doubt as to their identity, and Tawannears answered my question without hesitation.
"Cheyenne, brother. They are the Striped-arrow People, so-called from their custom of using turkey feathers on their arrow-shafts."
"Are they friends or enemies?"
He smiled.
"When two tribes have one herd of buffalo, Otetiani, they cannot be anything else but enemies."
"Yet surely there are buffalo enough here for all the Indians in the Wilderness!"
"My brother forgets that once the buffalo are attacked they will begin to run, and no man can tell which way they will go."
"Then we must fight the Cheyenne?"
"So it seems, brother," he replied with truly savage indifference.
Chatanskah and his people were equally convinced that there was but one way out of the difficulty, and they advanced upon the opposing party at a run. The Cheyenne, of course, had seen us as soon as we saw them, and they made it their business to meet us half-way. But both bands halted as though by command a long bow-shot apart, and stood, with weapons ready, eyeing each other provocatively.
A curious scene! Less than a mile away the buffalo poured south like a living river of flesh. There was some tendency on the part of the outer files to edge away from us, but the bulk of the vast herd paid us no attention whatsoever. They were terrifying in their numbers and inexorable progress. There must have been millions of them. And here were we, so relatively few, preparing to dispute with an equally insignificant body the right to slaughter some few units of their multitudes.
The chief of the Cheyenne stood forward, a giant of a man, his arms and chest gashed by the ordeals of the Sun Dance.
"Why do the Dakota interfere with the hunting of the Cheyenne?" he demanded. "Have they painted for war?"
"The Cheyenne know best whether there is war," retorted Chatanskah. "It is they who interfere with the Dakota's hunting."
"There is war only if the Dakota make it," asserted the Cheyenne. "The Cheyenne have pursued these buffalo for a day. Let the Dakota retire to their own country, and await there the coming of the buffalo."
"Since when have the Cheyenne said what the Dakota shall do?" flashed Chatanskah. "My young men have an answer ready for you."
The Cheyenne surveyed our array before replying.
"Nakuiman* sees that the Dakota have with them two of the Mazzonka,"** he remarked. "One of them is a large man, but very fat. Send him out here and let him show the warriors if he has strength in that big belly. Tell him to lay aside his weapons, all save his knife, and Nakuiman will do the same. If he comes, Nakuiman will tear out the Mazzonka's heart with his fingers and eat it before the Dakota. But the Mazzonka will not come. He is afraid."
* The Bear.
** Iron-makers, Indian name for white men.
Chatanskah somewhat dubiously translated this speech to Corlaer.
"The Bear is a strong warrior," he added. "He has counted more coups than any man of his tribe."
"Ja," said Corlaer, and putting down musket, tomahawk, powder-horn and shot-pouch, he pulled his leather shirt over his head.
Still Chatanskah hesitated. As it happened, the Dakota had never seen the big Dutchman at hand's-grips with an enemy, and whilst they had respect for his marksmanship and quiet sagacity they were inclined to make fun of him behind his back because of his excessive corpulence.
"Chatanskah need not be concerned," spoke up Tawannears, smiling. "Our brother Corlaer is the strongest warrior of his people. The Cheyenne will choose a new chief tomorrow—those who escape from the arrows of the Dakota. Tell Nakuiman to lay aside his weapons."
Chatanskah complied none too happily, and a young Cheyenne warrior advanced from the ranks of his band and relieved his chief of bow and arrows and tomahawk.
"Nakuiman waits," proclaimed the Cheyenne chief. "The Mazzonka is not in a hurry to die."
But Corlaer shambled forward as soon as his opponent had given up his weapons. The Dutchman's legs wobbled comically. His huge paunch waggled before him as he walked. Fat lay in rolls and ridges all over his hairy brown torso, and lapped in creases on his flanks. Only those who had seen him in action knew that beneath his layers of blubber were concealed muscles of unhuman strength, and that his placid exterior was a mask for a will that had never yielded to adversity.
The Cheyenne warriors greeted him with guttural laughter, and the Dakota pulled long faces. Nor could I blame them, after contrasting the outward appearance of the two champions. The Cheyenne was the biggest Indian I have ever seen, well over two yards in his moccasins, with the shoulders of an ox, clean-thewed, narrow-flanked, his legs like bronze pillars. He crouched as Corlaer approached and drew his knife, circling on the balls of his feet, the keen blade poised across his stomach in position to strike or ward, as need arose.
Corlaer, on the other hand, had not even drawn his knife, and his hands hung straight beside him. He slouched along with no attempt at a fighting posture, his whole body exposed to the Cheyenne's knife. The Cheyenne warriors passed from laughter to gibes and humorous remarks—which, of course, Corlaer could not understand—and Nakuiman evidently decided that they were right in their judgment, for he commenced a kind of dancing progress around Corlaer, never coming to close quarters, hut maintaining a constant menace with his knife.
Peter, affecting his customary manner of stolid indifference, turned clumsily on his flat feet as the Cheyenne circled him, making no effort to stay the quick rushes by which his opponent gradually drew nearer and nearer. This went on for so long that the Dakota around me commenced to fume with rage and humiliation, whilst the Cheyenne were convulsed with mirth. Then Nakuiman evidently decided to end the farce. He bounded at the Dutchman like a ball flung at a wall, and confident as I had been, I experienced a moment of foreboding as that rush came. Compact with concentrated energy, the Cheyenne drove home his thrust so fast that we bystanders could not follow it.
But Peter could. The Dutchman came awake as though by magic. His lolling stupidity vanished. His great body became instinct with the vitality that flowed inexhaustibly from springs that had never been plumbed. The Cheyenne struck. There was a flash of steel. Peter's arms whipped out. Steel flashed again in a wide arc, and the knife soared high in air and fell, point-down in the sod, twenty feet away. Remained, then, two heaving bodies. Peter held his man by one wrist and a forearm. The Cheyenne was struggling with every ounce of strength to break one of these grips so that he might seize his foe by the throat. Whilst I watched he stooped his head and fastened his teeth in Peter's shoulder.
The blood spurted from the wound and a quiver convulsed Peter's mighty frame. But he refused to be diverted from his purpose. Slowly, inexorably, he applied his pressure. And slowly, but inevitably, the Cheyenne's straining sinews yielded to him. Nakuiman's left arm was forced back—and back. Suddenly there was a loud crack. The Indian yelped like an animal in pain. The arm fell limp—and with the swift ferocity of a cat Peter pounced on the man's throat.
The jaws still fastened in the Dutchman's throbbing shoulder yielded to that awful pressure. A single gasping cry reached us. The Cheyenne's head sank back, and by a marvelous coordination of effort, Peter heaved the man's body at arm's-length over his head. A moment he held it there, his eyes on the ranks of Cheyenne warriors who had laughed at him. Then he flung it at them as though it had been a sack of corn.
It twisted through the air, struck the ground and rolled over and over into a huddle of inanimate limbs.
Peter shook himself, turned on his heel and walked slowly back to us.
"Oof," he remarked mildly. "Dot made me sweat."
That matter-of-fact action, brought the Cheyenne to realization of what had happened. Carried away by the spectacle of their chief's end, they abandoned all thought of moderation and charged us, bow-strings twanging. But the Dakotas were not unprepared. Chatanskah had fetched along a dozen of the French firelocks, in the use of which we had instructed his warriors, and we were able to meet the enemy with a devastating discharge which brought them up short. Leaderless and doubly dismayed, they had no fight left in them, and fled across the prairie pursued by the fleetest young men of the band.
We were left with the pleasant task of reaping a full toll of buffalo-meat, and the remaining Dakota, after scalping the dead Cheyenne and congratulating Corlaer, formed in a long line and trotted down toward the flank of the moving herd. The firing of the muskets had disconcerted the outer files of its mass, but these so far seemed to have made no impression upon the inner columns, and the net result of their perturbation was to slow up the herd's pace and start a confusion which was accentuated to a horrible degree as soon as the Dakota came within bow-shot.
Chatanskah afterward assured us that this herd must have wandered far without encountering men because it showed so little evidence of fear at our approach. He was also of the opinion that any herd of such enormous dimensions was more difficult to stampede than a herd of comparatively small size. At any rate, it was several moments after the booming twang of the bow-strings began that the herd showed a tendency to mill and change its direction. And during those few moments the Dakota slew enough meat to last their village through the Winter. Aiming between the ribs of the shaggy beasts they drove their flat-headed hunting-arrows into the fat carcasses up to the feathers, and it was seldom that two shots were required for one buffalo. Some staggered on a ways, but any buffalo that had a Dakota hunting-arrow in its vitals was sure to drop.
They dropped so fast and so easily that I was overcome with a pang of horror. It seemed ghastly, this wholesale slaughter. Bulls, cows, half-grown calves—but especially cows—fell by the score. It was a battue. And yet it made no impression at all upon the myriads of the herd. As far as we could see from horizon to horizon all was buffalo. They surged up over one skyline and dwindled behind another. And the only noises they made were the low rumbling of their countless hoofs and an indescribably plaintive note, part bellow, part moo—before the fright took them.
Our hunters had slain until their arms ached from pulling the taut bows, and whilst the thousands of buffalo adjacent to us had threshed away and striven to gallop either backward or forward or into the heart of the mass, the mass, itself, had given no indication of realizing that it was being attacked. I remember thinking that if the brutes possessed any reasoning power they would turn upon us in their numbers and trample us in the dust.
Instead, they fled from us. By some obscure process of animal instinct the warning was conveyed at last from the minor hordes we had harried so mercilessly to their farther-most brethren on the unseen western edge of the swarming myriads. One moment they were trending from north to south like some unsoluble phenomenon of nature, an endless, dusty procession of shaggy brown hides. The next they had showed us their sterns, turned westward, and were galloping away with a deafening roar of hoofs. It was as if the whole world was in motion. The dust clouds became so dense as to hide all movement. We stood now on the verge of the prairie. From our feet a brown desert stretched in the wake of the fugitive herd, a desert of pulverized earth in which there was not a single growing thing.
The roar of hoofs became faint in the distance. The dust-clouds slowly settled. A short while afterward I came and looked in the direction the buffalo had taken, and they were gone. The brown desert filled the skyline. And all about our Indians were busy with skinning-knives, wrapping the choice cuts of meat in the bloody hides; and Chatanskah was dispatching runners to bring out the full strength of the tribe; for we had made such a killing as seldom fell to the lot of an Indian community, and it behooved them to lose nothing of the riches nature had thrown in their way. Whatever might be the lot of their brothers in the neighboring villages, the Dakota of the Wahpeton Council Fire knew that for this Winter at least they were certain to abide snug and well-fed in their teepees.
Chatanskah talked of our deeds as the band clustered about the camp-fire that night, with sentries thrown out around the area strewn with dead buffalo to guard the spoil against wolf and wild dog and the eagles that swooped from the air.
"There will be much spoken of this in the Winter Count," he announced proudly. "The old men will say we have done well. The other Council Fires will be envious. But remember, brothers, that it was our white brother who slew Nakuiman with his bare hands and turned the hearts of Cheyenne to water.Hai, that was the greatest fight I ever saw! The Cheyenne will go home and creep under their squaws' robes.
"And what shall we say of our white brother who broke Nakuiman in pieces? The Cheyenne was called The Bear. Is not a warrior who slays a bear more than a bear?Hai, my warriors, I hear you say yes! So let us give the slayer of The Bear a new name. We will call him Mahtotopah*—for he is a bear, himself; he is Two Bears."
* Two Bears.
"Hai, hai," applauded the circles of warriors who sat around the fire, first the old men, outside those the youngsters, who had names to win.
"But Chatanskah will not forget that he has promised to guide Tawannears and his white brothers to the country of the Teton Dakota?" reminded Tawannears.
Chatanskah shook his head sorrowfully.
"Chatanskah has not forgotten," he said, "but he hoped that a bird might come and whisper in the ears of his new brothers and tell them to stay with the Dakota. In the Sky Mountains you will find no sweet buffalo meat. There are no teepees to shield you from the wind. Mahtotopah will waste his strength on the rocks. But you are brave men, and I know you will go on until the Great Spirit calls you."
Chatanskah made good his promise as soon as the tribe had secured the spoils of the hunt. He collected a little band of picked warriors, presented us with powder and lead captured from the Chippewa to replenish the reserve stock Corlaer carried in a great ox-horn and leather pouch, and we said good-by to the huddle of teepees, now surrounded by high-built racks of jerking meat and pegged-out hides in process of tanning. The last breath of Summer had left the air, and we were glad of the buffalo-skin robes the Wahpeton gave us. But there was advantage, too, in the keen zest of the lower temperature, for it inspired us to greater exertions, and we traveled at a rate we could not have attained during the hot months.
Our course lay up the valley of the Missouri in a north-westerly direction, more truly north than west, as I discovered. We journeyed so for many days, encountering frequently bands of the other Dakota Council Fires, Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, Yankton and Yanktonai. Once a raiding band of Arikara, savage warriors, with buffalo horns woven into their long hair instead of feathers, and wolf-skin breechclouts, swooped down upon us from the north. But they were looking for an undefended village to yield them the buffalo-meat they had been denied by some perverse trick of fate, and they sheered off at the discharge of our muskets, carrying their dead with them.
Each night we expected to awake to find the ground covered with snow, for the Winter usually develops earlier in these western lands than on the seacoast; but Providence aided us, and at the end of two weeks we met a wandering band of Yanktonai, who told us the Teton bands had crossed the Missouri and followed westward another river bordered by sandhills,* which entered the Missouri a day's march ahead of us. These Yanktonai were the first horse Indians we saw. They were of leaner build than the eastern Dakota, with keen, predatory faces and a harsher speech, matchless riders. Their mounts, which they stole from the Southern tribes—who in turn stole from the Spaniards—or bred from stolen stock, were small, clean-limbed beasts, bespeaking the Arab strain the Spaniards favor. Their arms were the lance in place of the tomahawk, and bow and arrow, and they carried also a small, round shield of the thick, rugged neck-hide of the buffalo.
*I think Ormerod refers to the Platte. From here on, his account of his wanderings increases in vagueness, owing to lack of established place names.—A.D.H.S.
Chatanskah was much concerned at the news that the Teton had moved farther west, for he knew that his return journey to his own villages would probably be delayed by snow; but when we offered to relieve him of his pledge he scouted the idea and insisted upon accompanying us as he had promised. And to say truth, as we penetrated deeper into this land of incredible distances and unknown peoples, we appreciated as we had not before the advantage of his knowledge and protection. The horse Indians, as we were to learn at first-hand, were natural thieves, who stole for the love of thieving and whose hands were instinctively raised against all men. To them, likewise, the name of the Long House, which had reached even the Wahpeton, was all but meaningless. I am sure the Yanktonai band would have murdered us cheerfully, if it had not been for Chatanskah's escort.
We easily identified the river they had described to us by its size and the white shimmer of the sandhills along the bank. Luckily for us the Missouri was low, and it was a task of no difficulty to ford and swim its bed at a point just above the other river's mouth. But the water was bitter cold, and we were glad to build two roaring fires and broil ourselves between walls of flame.
The next day, and for another two weeks, we continued up the valley of this river, having, to our no small discomfort, to pass over many tributaries large and small. But the weather continued clear, without a trace of moisture or snow. The country, it seemed to me, sloped upward slowly, as though climbing toward the huge mountains, which the Indians said were the final bar to the world they knew. We saw no people, but we passed a number of deserted village-sites, which Chatanskah asserted to represent the course taken by the Teton in their westward journey, probably in search of better grazing conditions for their horse herds.
Indeed, this proved to be the case. Our first glimpse of a man after we parted from the Yanktonai came as we surmounted a hill that shouldered abruptly above the level of the savannahs. As noiseless as a figure in a dream, a boy of adolescent age rode over its summit and peered down at us with startled eyes. A yelp rose from his lips, and he heeled his mount up and down in confused fashion as if not knowing which way to turn, then, shaking his fist defiantly in our direction, galloped off down the opposite slope.
"The Teton keep good watch," I commented. "But why did the boy wait to run?"
"He was signaling," explained Tawannears. "When we reach the hill-top you will see what he has accomplished."
From the brow of the hill we looked down upon a broad stretch of level grass-land. Midway of it hundreds of teepees clustered in concentric circles, with an opening to the east. Smoke curled up between the lodge-poles, and men, women and children swarmed the streets, all staring up at us. A body of warriors were running from the village toward the river, where several thousand horses were being rounded up by the boy herd-guards, whose shrill cries came faintly to our ears; and whilst we were still a considerable distance away the herd was in motion toward the village, and an imposing troop of warriors galloped to meet us, the sunlight glinting on feather head-dresses and lance-points and the bright beadwork of sheaths and quivers.
"Hai!" exclaimed Chatanskah. "The Teton have their eyes open. They do well to watch from the hill-top, but if I were choosing a place to pitch my people's teepees I would not put them under a hill which I could not see through in the night. However, I suppose they must have protection for theirsunka wakan* from the cold north winds. And here beneath the hill they have fine grazing grounds and water for the taking."
* Mysterious dogs—Indian name for horses.
At his advice we halted at the foot of the hill to await the coming of the horsemen, who stormed up as though they would ride us down. But a little, shriveled-up old man who rode in advance, flung out one hand with a single word of command, and they yanked their horses to an abrupt halt, scattering the sods right and left and flowing around us in a circle that barred all chance of retreat.
"Hao," said Chatanskah calmly. "Have the Teton left the Council of the Seven Fires? Does Nadoweiswe** forget the face of Chatanskah?"
** The Adder.
The little, shriveled-up chief eyed us grimly from the back of the big horse he bestrode. He had much of the look of an adder, beady, bright eyes, and a trick of thrusting out his tongue when he talked to lick around his lips. He spoke with a hissing sing-song accent because of the loss of several front teeth. And he was sudden in his actions, and his warriors plainly feared him, although any one of them could have tucked him under one arm.
"Hao," he answered. "Why did not Chatanskah send one in advance to tell Nadoweiswe he was coming?"
"Chatanskah knew not where the Teton were camped," retorted the Wahpeton chief. "This is a strange country for my warriors. Are the Wahpeton welcome or must they go back and tell their brothers the Teton no longer honor the Seven Fires?"
Nadoweiswe made an impatient gesture with his hand.
"Chatanskah talks like a child. He comes suddenly, without warning, and is surprised because we do not expect him. The Wahpeton and the Teton are brothers. But the Teton are not brothers to the Mazzonka I see with you."
"What enmity has Nadoweiswe for the Mazzonka?" asked Chatanskah in surprise. "There are none in his country."
"There was one a few sleeps ago," replied the Teton with savage emphasis. "He turned the hearts of my young men to water, so that they allowed the Siksika* to run off twenty hands** of horses the next night."
* Blackfeet.
** One hundred.
He turned in his saddle, and scowled at his warriors, and the fear that showed in every eye was amusing.
"Cowardly squaws!" he snorted. "They were afraid to leave their teepees. The white man had watered their hearts with his medicine."
And now he transferred his scowl to Corlaer and me.
"That is why we will have nothing to do with any white men," he concluded. "They may be friends of the one who bewitched my young men."
Tawannears spoke up, his ringing, musical voice in strange contrast to the rasping tones of the old chief.
"I am Tawannears, War Chief of the People of the Long House," he began.
Nadoweiswe looked at him with some astonishment.
"Hai," he said, "you are a long way from your lodge, young warrior."
"Many more moons' journey than my people have ever traveled," admitted Tawannears. "It is my post to guard the Western Door of the Long House. Tawannears has honor in his own country."
"That may be," returned The Adder ungraciously. "Here you are unknown."
"And Tawannears is also known in his country as the friend of the white men," continued Tawannears. "He is the friend of these white men here. They came with him to aid him in a search. They are his brothers."
"If they are friends of the Mazzonka who bewitched my young men they shall go away from here," snapped Nadoweiswe, "or I will take their scalps for my new medicine lance."
"What was this white man like?" inquired Tawannears.
"He was tall, and he wore a long black robe that reached his moccasins. My young men found him on the prairie, and they galloped up to take him captive. But he drew a weapon from his belt and shook it at them, and a great fear possessed them. There was strong medicine in that weapon. It did not make a loud noise like that." He pointed to my pun. "Nor did he strike with it. He did no more than hold it toward them, calling something the while in a loud voice, and their hearts turned to water, and they fled."
"What was the appearance of the weapon?" pressed Tawannears.
The Adder crossed two fingers, and Tawannears laughed, repeating the conversation to us.
"It was Black Robe!" I exclaimed.
"Ja," assented Corlaer.
Tawannears turned back to the Teton chief, whose eyes had never left our faces during this interval.
"Yes, Nadoweiswe," he said, "Tawannears and his white friends know the white man you speak of. He is our enemy."
"Hai," cried The Adder, "is it him you seek!"
"No," denied Tawannears, "we cannot lift finger against him, for the Great Spirit has set his seal upon him."
A look of comprehension dawned in The Adder's face. He nodded his head wisely.
"That was it," he said. "The Great Spirit punished my young men for threatening one He had set aside. I have known it to happen.Hai, it was unfortunate! But perhaps we can make it up. Chatanskah, you and your friends are welcome. There are seats in my teepee awaiting you. Come, and tell us of your wanderings; for soon it will be Winter, and we shall have nothing to do save sit around the fire and talk of what has been."
And I am bound to say the old rascal entertained us with savage courtesy during our progress to the village. We asked him for additional details about Black Robe, but all he could tell us was that the Jesuit had been seen south of the river the one time. Whence he came or where he was going, the Teton could not say.
A quarter-mile short of the teepees we were held up by the retrograde movement of the horse-herd, which was being shifted back to the grazing grounds along the river. The young lads who handled it worked with consummate skill, yet with the peculiarly cruel tactics which the Indians seem always to practice. They had driven the horses out of the village circle, and were turning them south when a diversion was created by a splendid stallion with a mottled brown and white coat, that had eluded all attempts to maneuver him into the ranks of the herd. Finally one of the youngsters raced up beside him and quirted him heavily over the flanks with a rawhide whip.
The stallion screamed with rage, swung around on his hind-legs and lashed out with fore-hoofs and snapping teeth. He missed the boy, but laid open the ribs of the other horse, that naturally took fright, unseated its rider and made off. For a moment the mottled stallion stood motionless, panting, nostrils expanded, eyes wide. Then he danced after the fleeing boy, heels flirting, teeth bared.
Nadoweiswe and his warriors paused to see what would happen next. None of them seemed anxious to interfere, and the love of horses that has been in my blood ever since the boyhood I spent in the Dorset countryside gripped hold of me. I handed my musket to Tawannears and started toward the stallion.
There was a thrill of interest in the group of Teton, and Nadoweiswe called after me.
"The Teton says to stay here," translated Tawannears. "He saysSunka-wakan-Kedeshka* has never been backed."
* Spotted Horse.
But that was just the push I needed to send me on. The instant my eyes had lighted upon that herd of glorious, half-tamed beasts my thighs had itched to clasp horse-flesh again, and the idea that the stallion was unbroken was the definite lure. One gift I confess to pride in is my knack with horses. It comes naturally to me, and at home in England and afterward in France, I had frequent occasion to learn the fine points of the ménage. Moreover, I was fairly sure from what little I had seen of the horse Indians up to this time that their only theory of horse-taming was horse-breaking. They knew nothing of the arts of conciliation by which the most high-strung animals can be mastered—arts which I had learned from many a Gypsy farrier to supplement the natural ability that was born in me. I suspected that in the case of this stallion they had found it impossible to do anything with him short of killing him.
I kept on, emitting a shrill whistle, which, as I anticipated, switched the stallion's attention from the Indian boy to myself. He hesitated, looked from one to the other of us—and gave the boy time to catch his own badly-scared mount. That was enough for the stallion. He was after some human on two legs, and he cantered up to me, eyes wickedly distended, lips drawn back. I simply folded my arms, and waited until he was within ear-shot before I spoke to him in a gentle, soothing tone, taking care to reveal no trace of fear or uneasiness. I suppose he had never heard a kind word from a man. It would have been contrary to the practice of his masters. So he was bewildered, and he slowed up involuntarily, and sidled around me.
I made no attempt to catch him, and his curiosity increasing, he circled me and peered into my face, careful to keep beyond reach, for he was now more afraid of me than vicious. I was a new experience. An Indian was something that he knew would lash him or kick him or stick a lance into him. He didn't know what I would do. So I talked to him some more, using the few Dakota words I had picked up, but aiming more to influence him by the tone of my voice and my eyes. And gradually I succeeded. He came closer. He pushed his velvet muzzle into my face, whinnying as ingratiatingly as though I were a young mare. But I affected not to notice him, and talked on.
When I threw one arm around his lowered neck, his eyes widened, but he did not bare his teeth or draw back. When I twisted one hand in his mane he shivered slightly, but stood still. I talked to him a while longer, and he quieted down. Then I patted his broad back, and vaulted upon it, leaned forward quickly and whispered again in his high-cocked ear. He hesitated, I pressed his flanks with my knees, jerked his mane, and he headed toward the herd.
Fifty feet from the nearest of his kind I slid from his back, and slapped him smartly on the rump. He turned his head, gave me a reproachful glance and cantered quietly up to a group of mares, taking his place as if by right among them. But as I walked away he flung up his head once and sent after me a prolonged whinny of farewell, surely as close to a human good-by as a beast could manage.
Nadoweiswe, with Chatanskah and Tawannears, rode out from the array of warriors to meet me.
"The Adder says," Tawannears hailed me, "that he would like to have you sit at his right-hand in his teepee. He does not know how good a warrior you are—" the Seneca's teeth showed in a smile—"but he is sure you would make a great horse-stealer."
I laughed.
"What did you tell The Adder?" I asked.
"I told him this was a feat I had never seen you perform before, and I did not think that you would consent."
Nadoweiswe leaned down from his horse, and spoke rapidly again.
"He says," Tawannears translated, "that he wishes to recover his horses the Blackfeet stole, but that with you to aid him he would likewise go south and raid the pastures of the Apache and the Comanche."
"Tell him," I answered, "to have his warriors remember that a horse does not have to be beaten to be mastered. As for the Blackfeet, tell him in my country they teach their warriors to stampede an enemy's horses by firing the grass behind them."
Nadoweiswe listened to this advice with a look of intense admiration.
"He says," Tawannears gave me his reply, "that you must be much wiser than you look. He is amazed at you. He will do what you say."
And it is a fact that during our short stay with the Teton they honored me as their principal guest, not because I was a warrior, or because I had displayed skill in diplomacy such as many tribes admire, or because I was an orator. No, the quality which they considered admirable was my God-given talent for horse-stealing.
There were several minutes of silence in the crowded teepee after Tawannears had finished his story.
"Tawannears has made strong the heart of Nadoweiswe," said the old Teton chief at last. "Nadoweiswe will tell the tale of Tawannears' search to all his young men so that their hearts may be made strong, too. If Nadoweiswe were a young warrior he would offer to go on with Tawannears and his white brothers and look for this strange Land of Lost Souls. But Nadoweiswe is an old man, and he is used to riding on horses; and horses could not climb the Sky Mountains which shut in the sun's hiding-place."
He lifted his pipe of ceremony from the ground at his feet and lighted it with a coal plucked from the fire.
"Can Nadoweiswe tell us about the land across the Sky Mountains?" asked Tawannears.
The little chief dropped his wrinkled, dried-apple visage on his chest.
"No," he answered, after another interval of reflection. "The stories of our wise men say nothing about this Land you seek. But my father was a medicine man, awakan witshasha.* He was very wise. He had traveled farther than any of our people—although not so far as Tawannears. And he told us the tribes beyond the Sky Mountains said that the Great Spirit lived not far away. He sits in a certain place on the earth, very white and still, with his head in the clouds. And sometimes when he is angry he hurls forth storms, and smoke and flame and loud noises fill the air. But these people never spoke of a Land of Lost Souls."
* Literally, mystery man.
"Yet if the Great Spirit sits there, the Land of Lost Souls cannot be far away," exclaimed Tawannears, with more animation than he had yet shown. "Nadoweiswe has put new courage in our hearts. Now, we can go forward, without fear."
Nadoweiswe shook his head.
"Do not go," he urged. "See, the fire roars here in the midst of us, but without robes we should be cold. Any day, perhaps today, the snow will fall. The land will all be white. Death will be in the wind."
"Nadoweiswe has given us the reason why we must leave his tepee," replied Tawannears. "We have far to go. Already we have lost time. If we stayed by the Teton fires the Winter would pass away and we should have achieved nothing."
"We might steal many horses," argued Nadoweiswe, with a shrewd glance at me. "We will march south and raid the Spanish tribes. There is much to be done in winter."
Tawannears smiled.
"If we can steal horses in Winter, surely we can travel west," he said. "It will be as cold going south as going toward the Sky Mountains."
"But Tawannears does not understand that the Sky Mountains contain more dangers than cold," returned the Teton chief. "The spirit beasts of the Underworld roam their defiles. They are the dwelling-place of the Powers of Evil."
"Tawannears doubts it not," agreed our comrade. "But we expected such perils before we left the Long House. Tawannears and his white brothers will journey through the country of Hanegoategeh, if need be."
Nadoweiswe tried again.
"Stay, and you shall have half the horses we steal," he offered, "and in the Spring I will go west with you, I and my young men."
"It cannot be," said Tawannears. "Our hearts will be sore at parting with Nadoweiswe and Chatanskah and all their people. But we must go."
The Teton gave it up.
"Tawannears and his white brothers walk to their deaths," he said sententiously. "The spirit beasts will devour them.Hai, it is a pity! But we will tell your story in the Winter Count. You shall be remembered."
And 'tis a fact that the old chief parted from us in the morning with as sincere evidence of regret as an Indian could show. He pressed upon us all the dried meat we could carry, together with three pairs of snowshoes and a new and more powerful bow and quiver of arrows for Tawannears to use in hunting game, thus making it possible for us to save our precious store of ammunition for self-defense; and he and all his warriors escorted us to the edge of the village. Nor must I leave out Chatanskah and our Wahpeton friends, whose demonstrations of affection were equally touching—if for no other reason than because of their stoical suppression of all signs of emotion.
But our last farewell we received after we had left the village and were skirting the horse-herds grazing west along! the river-bank. I heard a whinny of delight, and Sunkawakan-kedeshka, the mottled stallion, came trotting toward us with his attendant band of mares. He stopped some distance off, with a neigh of inquiry, as if to demand why I would not stop and play with him. I thought for an instant he would follow us, and so pretended to ignore him; but when we had gone on for perhaps a mile and reached the crest of a slight ridge he evidently lost interest and trotted back to the herd. The incident amused me, although I saw in it no significance and it slipped my mind completely as Tawannears pointed to the cold, gray aspect of the northern sky.
"Somewhere there is snow," he commented.
"Ja," assented Corlaer. "Andt der wind comes this way."
The flakes commenced to fall during the afternoon, but we were on the edge of the storm and they were never thick enough to obscure our vision. At night we contrived a shelter of brushwood, and lay fairly warm beneath our buffalo robes. Yet we knew that in a severe storm we should require more protection, and in the morning were relieved to discover the snow was no more than three inches deep with the sky above us a clear blue.
Two days afterward the belated Winter broke in earnest. A wind like a giant's sickle howled out of the northwest, and the snow reared a dense, white, fluttering wall a hand's-breadth from our eyes. It was all a man could do to lean against the blast and keep his footing. A yard apart we were lost from each other. Our voices might not carry through the soft, bewildering thickness of it and the shrieking of the wind overhead.
Ill-fortune had caught us in a bare valley between two hills, and the nearest shelter we marked down before the snow blinded us was a clump of timber a mile south. For this we made as best we could, stumbling and falling, never sure of the way, the breath torn from our lungs by the tug of the gale, the snow freezing on us as it fell, our faces smarting from the bite of the sheer cold.
I think 'twas Corlaer's giant strength carried us to safety. He strode betwixt Tawannears and me, and when one of us faltered, his arm was swift to lend support. In his quiet, bull-headed way, too, he found the right direction, despite the dazing isolation, the stupefying impact of the storm. He saw to it that we quartered the wind, and steered us straight to the very wood we had aimed for as the snow blotted out our surroundings.
Here in the wood it was just as cold and dark as in the open, and the snow sifted through the branches like the moulting feathers of bird flocks incredibly vaster than those that had passed over the Ohio; but the trees at least served to break somewhat the force of the wind, and we had the added comfort of work to do, for we knew that we could ward off the death foretold by Nadoweiswe only if we hastened to improvise a weather-tight habitation—no easy task in the white darkness and the chill that seemed to strike into the brain.
In the heart of the wood we came upon an immense bowlder, and with our hatchets we felled a number of trees so that they toppled across it. They were firs, heavy with foliage, a dense, impervious roof. We also felled saplings to heap up for end-walls, and fetched in many arm-loads of pine-boughs for bedding and fire-wood. As we worked our blood flowed faster, and we conquered the numbing force of the storm. And the snow, steadily floating down, improved our handiwork, heaping an extra roof and more substantial walls to shut out the cold. When we had crawled inside, and by skillful use of a few pinches of gunpowder induced the beginnings of a small blaze out of damp wood we felt cheerful again. A meal of jerked meat and a night's rest under pine-boughs and buffalo-robes, and we were ready to discount the continued fury of the storm upon awaking.
Three days it snowed. The first two days there was no diminution in the storm's vigor, but the third day the wind became less violent, although the snow fell uninterruptedly. It was on the third day that we heard a far-off, mournful howling.
"Wolfs," commented Corlaer.
"What are they doing?" I asked. "Surely, in this distemper of nature——"
"They are hunting," said Tawannears. "The deer and the buffalo cannot run away in such weather."
The howling came nearer, died in the distance.
The morning of the fourth day we wakened to a world that was all a clean, dazzling white, snow to the depth of a man's chest on the level, ay, and higher, and heaped into drifts the size of young mountains in the hollows. We in our hut were obliged to tunnel to the surface, for the bowlder and our artificial structure had formed a windbreak against which the snow was piled to twice my height. We cut our way out gradually, taking care not to permit the treacherous stuff to cave in upon us, fetched up our weapons and packs, donned snowshoes and resumed our journey.
Snowshoeing is slow work in hilly country, but we made better going of it than the unfortunate wild things we saw on every hand, profiting by a thaw which gradually scummed the level drifts. In a gulley a herd of buffalo were buried chest-deep, some of the outer ones frozen solid, the others subsisting by their combined animal heat. A herd of great deer—the bucks as tall at the shoulder as a tall man—that Tawannears called Wapiti*—were plunging clumsily through the crusted surface of the snow, falling forward on their horns. In a tiny valley which had been unusually sheltered an immense concourse of antelope threshed about, butting each other for the scanty food available.
* Of course, Ormerod refers to the elk.—A.D.H.S.
We saw numerous bears, which Tawannears deemed strange, saying that these beasts must have been surprised by the sudden advent of the storm, after delaying to den-up, as is their custom, because of the protracted fall. A cougar, a striped, cat-faced demon, passed us on a hillside, belly to the snow, on the track of some quarry. And during the afternoon we heard at frequent intervals the wailing cry of the wolves. Toward dusk they came steadily nearer, and I grew uneasy; but neither of my companions said anything, and I did not like to seem more nervous than they. I held my peace until we were traversing a level stretch of plain just short of sunset, and a torrent of low-running gray shapes erupted over the skyline.
That indescribable, heart-shaking howl of the hungry wolf echoed across the snow.
"Those beasts are tracking us," I exclaimed.
"They are wolves, brother," said Tawannears briefly.
"And they appear to know that we are eatable," I retorted.
"They will do us no hurt," he answered with a trace of impatience. "There is abundant game for them to pull down on every side."
"Then why follow us?" I insisted.
"They come our way, brother. Why not! Who knows what end of the Great Spirit they serve?"
"But—" I did not know what to say; occasionally Tawannears became so Indian that I lost touch with him—"they are wolves. They have nothing to do with the Great Spirit. They are hungry."
He looked at me somberly.
"I have that here they will respect—" he tapped his chest, where I knew he carried the wolf's-head sign manual of his clan—"they are my brothers."
"Brothers!" I gasped.
I was myself by adoption a member of the Wolf Clan, yet I had never thought of wolves as brothers.
"Ja," corroborated Corlaer, joining the conversation for the first time. "Der wolfs are broders. Why not?" He used Tawannears' own words. "Do not worry, my friendt. They run our way. Dot is all."
But I did worry as the shadows lengthened. The piercing howls seemed fairly to tremble with menace. I thought they were nearer at dusk than they had been in the full glare of the sunset. Then the early moon rose, and I saw the gray pursuers once more, low, sinister shapes, galloping over the snow, their broad pads seldom breaking through the crust—and I knew they were nearer.
"Aaaah-yaaah-oooo-oouuu-wh!"
Long-drawn-out, it quavered upward, was sustained and dropped off on an eerie pitch of unspeakable import.
"I don't like this," I declared, unable to restrain myself.
"What would Otetiani do?" inquired Tawannears mildly.
"Shoot them. There seems to be no cover available."
He shook his head.
"Whatever else happens, brother, do not shoot."
"Are we to be dragged down out in the open, then, without raising a hand in defense?" I asked sarcastically.
"No, brother. I have said that they will do no harm. We have far to go yet. We cannot camp here in the open without wood or shelter. Let us hurry."