HIS LITTLE BODY ACTUALLY FLEW THROUGH THE AIR
HIS LITTLE BODY ACTUALLY FLEW THROUGH THE AIR
Every one laughed then, and White Wolf was quickly told what had happened. Very gently he reached down and drew Sinopah up on the saddle in front of him: "I am not surprised that the boy escaped," he said. "I feel that the gods are good to this son of mine. I am sure that they intend him to live to great age."
The hunters had killed several hundred buffalo in the chase, so the chiefs ordered camp to be pitched right there beside a small prairie lake, and for five days the people were busy stretching and curing the buffalo hides, and cutting the tons and tons of meat into thin sheets and drying it.
That first evening by the lake there was much talk about the narrow escape of Sinopah. A number of instances were recalled where the end had been different.
"I remember a day away back in my youth, when Chief Three Suns lost his little girl in just such a way," said Red Crane. "Horses are uncertain animals. They don't have much sense at any time. You all know how often they go crazy with excitement.That was just what happened to Sinopah's pony to-day. The passing of that great stream of buffalo, their swift running, the thunder of their hoofs, all was too much for his little brain. He just couldn't help running too; some strange attraction there was which caused him to go right into the herd and run with it.
"Well, about this little girl: The hunters had chased and killed many buffalo and the women were at work skinning the animals and cutting up the meat. The little girl sat on her pony watching her mother cut up a big fat cow, when over the hill came a big herd of buffalo that had been feeding at a distance, had seen the other herd running, and now were running to join it. The animals came close in passing, and suddenly the pony went crazy and ran to join them. Too late the mother ran to grasp its trailing rope. The little girl was tied fast in her saddle, so she could not fall out of it if she tried to. In about the distance of a bowshot that pony was rightin front of the rushing buffalo, and they, running faster, soon closed in around it. Once in a while we could see the little girl's head above the shaggy backs of the great animals as her pony jumped along with them; and then suddenly, a huge bull stuck its head under the pony and tossed it and the little girl high in the air. Down they came on the backs of other buffalo, and that was the end for them. There was mourning in the camp that night, and for many a moon afterward in the lodge of Three Suns."
Sinopah had not shown much interest in his grandfather's story, and now that it was ended he wriggled out of his mother's arms and going over to his father, said:—
"But my horse is not dead, father; it ran away with the buffalo. I want you to find and bring him back to me."
"That I shall not do," the chief grimly answered. "I forbid any one in this camp to bring it in. 'Tis an animal of crazy head and evil heart. Here, now, I give it to the sun,also the saddle that is on its back. Mother, make a new saddle for the boy. In place of the pony, I give him that gentle old black-and-white pinto to ride."
"But I have my own horses; plenty of them," Sinopah objected. "Let me ride one of them."
"Not until you are much older," his father answered. "They are all wild and too strong-mouthed for your little hands to guide."
As soon as the meat was dried, the people moved on to the middle butte of the Sweet-Grass Hills, and from there through the gap to Milk River, which runs past the northern slope of the small range. The lodges were set up in the edge of the timber bordering the stream, and the play lodge of the children was placed under some big trees close to the water. The tribe remained here for several moons. With their mothers to watch them, and often Grandfather Red Crane, Sinopah and Lone Bull and Otaki passed thelong days playing in and around the little lodge. They had crowds of guests, children coming from all parts of the big camp to join in their sports.
A favorite game of Blackfeet children, and one as old as the tribe itself, was the making of clay images of the different animals of the country. Not all clay was good for this purpose, some of it falling apart, or cracking, as soon as it dried. The best was dark gray in color, very fine-grained, and tough when mixed with a few drops of water to about an ounce of the material. Grandfather Red Crane discovered a foot-thick deposit of this good clay in a riverbank near the play lodge and called the children: "Come over here, all of you," he shouted; "here is image earth in plenty. Now I want to see which one of you can make the best buffalo."
With Sinopah and his two chums were a dozen other children. At the call of the old man, they all ran to him and with sticks and sharp stones began digging out lumps of theclay; pieces from the size of a hazelnut up to that of a hen's egg. These were angular in shape and very hard and tough, but that didn't matter. Each child found a good-sized, flat, smooth rock, and on it mashed the clay lumps to fine powder with a smooth hand-stone. The longer the stuff was pounded, the more flour-like it became, the better it would be for making the images. Some of the children were in such a hurry to start making these that they didn't half pound their clay, and afterwards their work cracked and fell to pieces.
Sinopah had never before played this game, so Grandfather Red Crane sat beside him and directed the work. It was work, hard work, the pounding of the clay, and the perspiration dripped from his forehead as he kept on until it was very fine. It was done at last, and the old man gathered it in a flat heap in the centre of the flat rock. They were sitting right at the edge of the river, and dipping his fingers into the water he sprinkled the clay two orthree times, and then began kneading it, just as a cook does flour for bread.
"Put your hand into it; feel of it," old Red Crane told Sinopah every few minutes, and the boy kept doing so.
At first the clay was very sticky, large portions of it hanging to his fingers; and although the stuff had been pounded very fine, it felt coarse and lumpy.
"Now here is where a big mistake is often made," said the old man. "The clay feels as if it needed a lot more water, and if you were working it, you would surely sprinkle on too much. Really the stuff is almost wet enough. Now see: I put on just a few drops more, and now I work it a long time."
This time the old man kneaded it steadily for as much as five minutes. Then he patted it down into a flat cake and ran the palm of his hand across it several times, making a smooth, dull polish on the surface. Then he pinched off a small portion and worked it with the fingers of both hands. The clay wasnow of just the tough softness of putty as the glazier uses it for setting window panes. "There! it is just right," said the old man. "Mind that you do not ever make the stuff any softer."
By this time all the other children had prepared their clay and were busily shaping out images of the buffalo. The older ones were quite skillful modelers and soon had two or three made and standing on the bank in front of them. Watching them, Sinopah began his work, taking a lump of the clay as large as he could hold in one hand and trying to shape it. He pinched and pulled, rounded and flattened the stuff for a long time, but could not get it to look like a buffalo or any other animal.
Grandfather Red Crane sat beside him, smoking his long pipe and saying not a word. Very often Sinopah would sigh, stop work, and look beseechingly up, and getting no offer of help, make another trial. And so it went on for a long time. Quite often theold man muttered some words, but the boy did not hear. He was praying; praying to the sun: "O great one! O you maker of the day and ruler of the world!" he kept saying; "give this boy of ours an enduring heart. Give him a brave heart. Give him the will to strive and keep striving for that which he wants."
And then, laying aside his pipe, he reached over and took the shapeless lump of clay from Sinopah. "You have done your best," he said; "I will now show you how to make an image."
He made a roll of the clay so that it was much larger around at one end than at the other, and then pressed it somewhat flat. "The buffalo is very tall in front," he said, "and quite low in his hindquarters, so we will fashion his high hump and his big head out of the large end of the clay."
He worked as he talked, pressing and squeezing and pushing the mass of stuff with thumbs and fingers, and in a very fewminutes fashioned a very lifelike body of a buffalo. Then he found a slender dead branch of willow and broke from it four pieces for the legs, and stuck them into the body in their proper place. This made the model look very queer, standing as it did on pipe-like, wooden legs. But the old man was not done with the work. He next took more clay and covered the legs with it, fashioning the stuff on the sticks, covering them with it completely so that they very closely resembled the legs of the living animal. Much pleased with his success he set the little buffalo down before Sinopah and said: "There is a buffalo for you, my son; now let us see how good a one you can make."
Sinopah was very proud of the gift. He shouted to the other children to come and look at it, and they crowded around him bringing the animals they had made. Not one of them was so good as that modeled by the old man, and with fresh clay they began at once to try to do better work. The firstbuffalo that Sinopah made was not a good one, but at least it had the shape of one in a rough way. It was plain enough that he had tried to make a model of that animal. Old Red Crane, smoking his long-stemmed stone bowl pipe, sat close by all the morning and encouraged him; the boy made one model after another, improving each time. By the time the sun was straight above in the sky he had made seven little buffalo images, and the last one was a very fair likeness of the great shaggy beast of the plains.
It was now the middle of the day and the children were very hungry, but they were so interested in making clay buffalo that they would not go home to eat. Their mothers had thought of their needs, however, and coming very quietly to the play lodge under the trees, they built a small fire in it, and broiled plenty of fresh fat meat over the coals. Then they called the children and old Red Crane, and what a feast they all had. It was very simple fare; just meat, and ahandful of dried service berries for each; but none of them wanted anything else; not even salt. Since the very beginning of things the Indians had lived on meat and a few berries, fresh or dried. It was the white man who taught them to have other wants.
After eating their fill, the children hurried back to the river and commenced modeling again. Now that they had numbers of clay buffalo, they made other animals; deer, bears, elk, bighorn, wolves, beavers, horses, antelope, and mountain goats. Along late in the afternoon each child had a really lifelike set of these. Grandfather Red Crane, still with them, said several times that it was time for the little ones to go home, but still they lingered, finishing just one more animal. They had eyes for their work only, but the old man was always looking about him, up and down the river, and across at the bluffs on the north side of the valley. Naught moved, or flew, or swam but what he saw it.
So it was that he saw the bushes trembling and shaking a little way upstream from where he and the children sat, and he knew that this was not caused by the wind. He sat very still and watched. He wondered what it could be that was coming toward them.
Presently he saw a small, black-eyed face peering through the leafy branches at the edge of the thicket. Then another, and another, and he knew one of them, the face of Weasel Tail, a boy who lived at the upper end of the big camp. "Ah-ha! he is the leader of the boys up there," he thought, "and has come to raid my children here."
But he said nothing, and watched and waited. And then, suddenly, with loud cries, little Weasel Tail sprang out of the brush, leading a dozen other whooping youngsters, and the whole band came skurrying down the shore and fell upon the little group of clay image-makers.
Then what fierce excitement andstruggling and wrestling took place for possession of the toys. The little girls, of course, shrieked, and cried, and ran homeward for protection. But the boys of both parties just struggled with one another. Sinopah was tackled by an upper camp boy of about his own age, and over and over they rolled on the gravel almost into the water. Then the boy quickly sprang up, seized all the images he could, and ran away whence he had come, all the others of the band going too and carrying away nearly all the images that had been made.
Through it all, old Red Crane had sat quietly laughing, and letting the struggle go which way it would.
Now that it was all over, Sinopah ran over to him and asked: "Grandfather, why did you let those upper camp boys take our animals?"
"Because they earned them," the old man replied. "That was the game. It was war. Those boys were your enemies and theyconquered. It is now your turn. You must go and raid them. No, not to-day. You all must send scouts to watch their play, and sometime you will have a good chance to get as good as they took from here."
The children of the upper end of the camp kept the clay animals they had captured just two days, and then they in turn were surprised by Sinopah's older comrades and lost them, and a number of their own toys also. In this encounter a boy of each party got very angry and hurt one another in the rough scramble. That evening when their fathers came home from hunting there was much talk about the trouble; it was very, very seldom that Blackfeet children quarreled and came to blows, and Red Crane and several other old men were called to decide what had best be done.
In the morning all the children of the camp were called together and Red Crane gave them a short talk:—
"My little ones," he said, "every day youare growing taller and stronger and will soon be strong men. The Blackfeet will soon depend upon you to fight the enemy, and they are all around us, and to keep our great plains and the herds of game upon them for our own use: that is one reason why you must never quarrel with one another. If you quarrel when you are children, you will quarrel with one another when you are older; it is only by being all brothers, as it were, by loving one another and standing by one another, that you can keep the tribe from being conquered by its many enemies. Another reason is that the great Sun himself forbids it. Now, promise, all of you, that there shall be no more of this."
"We take your words!" "We will quarrel no more," they shouted in answer, and were soon off to play again.
That evening, when the family were all sitting around the lodge fire, Sinopah rolled across the couch into his father's arms and asked: "Who is the Sun? How can he tellus what to do? Who is Old Man to whom I hear you praying?"
"I am glad you asked," White Wolf replied. "It is time for you to know all about these things and to begin praying with us. Listen, now, and I will try to make you understand.
"In the beginning was no one but Old Man. He was the same as any of us except that he had yellow hair, blue eyes, and a white skin, and had very powerful medicine which enabled him to do great things. The time came when he thought he would like to have a world, so he made this one. He made it flat, with a straight down-cut edge all around it. But that didn't suit him, so in different parts of it he made a lot of running jumps, and at every jump a mountain arose under him. Then from the mountains he cut gashes in the plains, and wherever he cut, valleys were formed and creeks and rivers ran in the bottom of them. This looked good enough for the world, and so he then madeliving things on it: people, animals, and all the grasses and things that leaf.
"But when Old Man made the people he gave them paws instead of hands, so they were quite helpless and at the mercy of the bears and all other animals; whenever they wanted to, the animals killed and ate the people.
"Old Man was so busy going here and there inspecting the world, and the things he had made, that it was some time before he saw what was going on. When he did notice it, he sat down on a big rock and scratched his head many times and thought a long time before he knew what to do. He then called all the people to him and slit down their claws, so that they became fingers and thumbs, with which the people could do all kinds of work. He showed them first how to make bows and arrows, stone knives and arrow-points, and then taught them how to shoot and kill and cut up the animals. Lastly, he gave them fire with which to cook the meatand keep themselves warm. Since that time we have been more and more the masters of the world. Better than all the other tribes he made, Old Man liked us Blackfeet. He saw that this part of the world was the best part, and so he gave it to us with all its many kinds of game.
"Away back in those first days the Blackfeet had much to learn. It was the fault of a woman that caused sickness and death. The first person to get sick was a little baby. The mother took it to Old Man and asked why it cried; why it refused to eat?
"'It is sick,' he told her,'and it may die.'
"'Die? What is that?' the woman asked.
"'It is what happens to an animal when men shoot it with their arrows,' Old Man replied. 'They cease to breathe, the heart stops beating, that is the end of them.'
"'But my child must not die,' the woman cried. 'You made us; you are powerful; I pray you to keep it from dying.'
"Old Man stood silent a long time. Theywere at the edge of a river. At last he said to her: 'Woman, it shall be as you say about this. Now here is a stone, and here is a piece of wood. I will throw into the water which one of them you choose. If it floats, then your child and all the people shall live forever; if it sinks, then all of you and those yet to be born must die from one cause and another.'
"Old man had picked up the rock and the piece of wood while talking, and he now held them out. 'Choose the one I shall throw,' he told her.
"The woman stood staring at the two things a long time, and the longer she looked at them the more frightened she became; and at last she cried: 'Throw the rock!'
"Old Man did as he was told; the stone struck the water with a big splash and sank; the baby died in its mother's arms right there. Death had come to the people by a woman's unwise choice.
"For a long time after that, whenever aperson became sick he soon died. The people had not yet learned about different medicines, and other ways for curing sickness. Nor could they get help from Old Man: he had told them all good-bye and gone into the West, his last words being that at some far future time, when they desperately needed him, he would return. Day after day they now cried out for him, and in vain.
"A number of winters came and went, and all the time the people kept dying in great numbers. At last a young man who had a big scar on his face set out to visit all the animals, hoping that some one of them might tell him how to get rid of the scar. He traveled on and on for several moons, visiting in turn the bear, the beaver, the wolf, and all the others of the country. In those days all of them could talk.
"'O my brother!' he said to the bear, 'I have heard that you have great medicine: I beg you to have pity and remove this scar from my face.'
"'I am sorry, but I haven't the power to do that,' the bear replied. 'Now there is the beaver; he is the wisest of all us animals; I advise you to see him about this.'
"But the beaver could not remove the scar. He advised the young man to call on the badger; the badger sent him on to the wolf; and so it went until Scarface had seen them all. Then he gave up all hope, and at last, arriving at the shore of a great lake, lay down on the sands to die.
"Then it was that two swans came swimming close to the shore where he lay crying, and asked what was his trouble. Scarface told them, and when he had ended the swans said: 'Brother, do not despair: one there is, greater than all you have asked for help. His home is out there on an island; you must go to him.'
"Scarface rose up and looked out on the great lake, and could see nothing but the blue water extending to the very rim of the world. 'There is no island,' he saidmournfully, and sat down on the sand. 'Oh, why did you put false hope in my heart? Go, now, and let me die in peace.'
"'But we told you truth, brother,' the swans replied. 'Truly, an island is out there, but so far it cannot be seen from here. We pity you; we wish to help. Come now and lie down on our backs and we will carry you to the sacred island. Never yet has any man of this world stepped foot on it.'
"Scarface looked at the swans, at the lake, and then, reaching for his bow and arrows, which he had thrown away when he lay down to die, he went and lay down on the backs of the big birds. 'It matters not where I die,' he thought. 'It may as well be out on that great blue water as here on this sandy shore.'
"The swans were big and strong, their backs made a soft couch. While they swam steadily and swiftly westward on the deep waters Scarface slept. When he awoke they were nearing a big island, and presently,having come to shallow water and near the shore, they told him to get off. 'This is the place,' they said, 'and yonder behind that grove of trees lives the great one'; and with that they turned, and rising on their powerful wings flew away in the direction whence they had come.
"Scarface waded ashore and right on the beach met the most beautiful youth he had ever seen. His clothing was of soft, white, tanned skins embroidered with quill-work of rainbow colors.
"'You are welcome here,' said the youth. 'I will tell you my name: it is Morning Star. My father is the Sun. My mother is the Moon. We live here on this island.'
"Scarface then told who he was, and why he had come to this far place. Morning Star said that he had come to the right one to help him.
"'But, brother,' he added, 'before going to our lodge I want you to do something for me. Out there on that rocky point livea tribe of big, sharp-billed birds. One by one they have killed my brothers, and I am forbidden to fight them. I want you to go and kill them for me.'
"Scarface did not have to be asked twice. He strung his bow, ran out on the point, and began to shoot the wicked birds. They came at him with loud, harsh cries and tried to stab him with their bills, and one by one they fell around him until all were dead. Then the two young men cut off their scalps and carried them to the Moon. She was a beautiful woman and was dressed in strange and gorgeous garments. When Scarface was made known to her she hugged and kissed him, and then wept. 'I cry from thinking of my dead sons,' she said. 'You have avenged their death; you have killed those wicked birds, so now I take you for my son.'
"She then took Scarface into her beautiful big lodge and gave him choice food. It was now almost night, and soon the Sun came home from his daily task of givinglight and heat to the world. When told what Scarface had done, he gave him kind greeting. 'Young Blackfeet,' he said, 'you have done much for us this day: remain with us for a time and I will do something for you.'
"Scarface did stay there a long time. Every night the Sun taught him sacred songs, and over and over showed him different kinds of plants that were cures for different kinds of sicknesses. Also he said that he was the ruler of the whole world and that people must pray to him for what they need. And that they must love one another, and not lie or steal. That they must be very kind to the old people, and the widows and orphans.
"And then, one night, the Sun rubbed a powerful black medicine on the young man's face which removed the scar. Then loading him with many beautiful presents he led him out of the lodge, the Moon and Morning Star following. Before them stretched the Wolf'sRoad,[1]and the Sun pointed to it. 'There is your trail,' he said. 'Follow it and you will arrive at the camp of the Blackfeet. Do not forget that you are to teach them all that I have taught you.'
"At that the Moon and Morning Star wept, and so did Scarface, for he had learned to love them as much as they did him. Tears almost blinded him as he started out on the shining trail that mounted before him far up into the sky. On and on he followed its straight way, and at last came to the lodges of the people.
"So it was, O Sinopah, that the people got help in time of sickness and trouble. That shining Maker of the Day is our greatest god and you must ever pray to him, and make him presents."
That night the little boy sat by the fire a long time and thought about all he had heard. Then he went to the doorway of thelodge and old Red Crane pointed out the Wolf's Road. He thought that he would try to climb it some day when he grew to be a man.
FOOTNOTE:[1]The Wolf's Road, Mah-kwi Ok-so-kwi, is the constellation of stars we commonly call the Milky Way.
[1]The Wolf's Road, Mah-kwi Ok-so-kwi, is the constellation of stars we commonly call the Milky Way.
[1]The Wolf's Road, Mah-kwi Ok-so-kwi, is the constellation of stars we commonly call the Milky Way.
The leaves of the cottonwoods along the stream were falling; high up in the blue sky geese and swans and ducks were honking and trumpeting and whistling and quacking as they winged their way southward toward the land of Us-kus-sai Ne-po-yi: always summer. Milk River was not a good place to winter, because there was nowhere along its upper stretches much fuel; so the chiefs held a big council one day to decide where the cold season should be passed. After a whole afternoon's talk it was found that most of them preferred the upper Two Medicine River, and there the camp was moved after a couple of days' travel. The lodges were set up in a very heavily timbered bottom that was shelteredon the north by a high sandstone cliff several miles long.
This place the Blackfeet called the Pis-kan, or, as we would say, "The Trap": for here they were wont to decoy and kill—when everything was right—a whole herd of buffalo at one time. The last time the tribe had been there, Sinopah was so young that he did not know what was being done, but since then he had heard of the wonderful way in which the animals were there lured to their death, and he was very anxious to see it all.
After the camp was well settled, preparations were made for decoying or trapping a herd of buffalo. Only a few men in the whole tribe were able to do this, and so they were believed to have great "medicine": that is, mysterious power given them by the gods. One of these men was White Wolf, the father of Sinopah.
White Wolf came into his lodge one evening after a visit to the other chiefs, and saidto old Red Crane: "There is not much meat left in the lodges: we have decided that it is best to try to make a big killing to-morrow; you are asked to decoy a herd."
"Hah! That all depends on many things," the old man answered. "There must be a herd in the right place out there on the plain; the wind must not be in the south; and my medicine has to be right, else I will fail to do the work. I will begin now, however, and try my best to bring meat. Send the camp crier around at once to notify the hunters to sing the coyote song before they sleep."
Old Four Bears was the camp crier. As soon as a horse could be saddled he mounted it and rode among the lodges from one end of the camp to the other, shouting: "Listen! Listen, O ye hunters. If all be right, Red Crane will bring meat tumbling down over the cliff to-morrow. Pray then to the gods for success; sing, all of ye, the lucky hunter's song, the song of the coyote—greatest hunter of all; sing it this night before you sleep."
As he went his way, prayer and song were started in every lodge, and within a short time several thousand men's deep voices were intoning prayers and quavering the strange, staccato tune of the song. Powerful and weird was the sound of it all in the still, frosty night. Outside the lodges the dogs sat up on their haunches and howled; and from beetling cliffs and the far reaches of valley and plain the wolves joined in with long-drawn, melancholy cry. Had you been there, as I was, you too would have been strangely affected by it all. It was a very solemn and sacred time: men, women, children, even the very animals, were united in beseeching their gods for food.
Sinopah sat very quiet and wide-eyed watching his grandfather. The old man first got out his paint-bag and rubbed reddish-brown ochre, color best loved by the gods, on face and hands; then he sang the coyote song; and lastly, having filled and lighted a pipe, blew smoke toward the four cornersof the earth, toward sky and ground, and prayed.
"Hai-yu, all-powerful Sun! Hai-yu, Old Man! Hai-yu, thou little under-water creature," he began, "have pity on us and give us food. I pray you to give me power to bring much food to all your children here."
And so he went on, praying and singing for a long time. Before the old man finished, Sinopah became very sleepy, but kept his eyes wide open and would not lie down: there was something in that prayer he wanted to know about:
"Grandfather," he cried, when the old man was done, "you prayed also to a little under-water creature. What animal is that—a mink—a muskrat—and is it very powerful?"
Red Crane reached over and took the boy in his arms: "Little one, that is the one thing I may not tell you," he replied. "The little animal is my medicine; my dream animal. Like all other Blackfeet youths, and asyou must do some day before you are grown and start out to war, I went away from the camp by myself and fasted many days and nights in order to get a vision; that is, to get a medicine, a secret helper to guide me safely through the dangers of life.
"From long fasting my body became weak, and at last it slept soundly. Then it was that I—my shadow—left the body and traveled far, and asked all whom I met for help. It was while I lay by the side of a stream that this certain little creature came up out of the water and sat on the shore near me. 'I heard your call for help,' it told me, 'and I have come to help you. When you pray to the Sun and Old Man, pray also to me and I will be your friend, your helper, coming often to you when your body sleeps and telling you what to do, and what not to do. But you must never tell any one my name.'
"So it was, little Sinopah, that I got my medicine, my secret helper. I am old; Ihave been through many battles; through dangers of all kinds; and have suffered no harm. And many, many times this little under-water creature has come to me in my dreams and given me warnings. Truly, it is a powerful secret helper that I have."
"Grandfather, when can I go fast and get my medicine?" Sinopah asked when the old man had finished.
"Oh, not for a long time. Not until you have seen sixteen or eighteen winters," he replied.
And then, tucked under warm, soft buffalo robes by his mother, the boy almost at once fell asleep.
The next morning every one was up before sunrise and ready for the trapping of the buffalo. Some young men had slept out on the plains back of the cliffs, and hurrying into camp they reported that a band of five or six hundred of the animals were grazing on the second ridge north of the valley. Old Red Crane said that his dream had beenfavorable. He tossed up a feather, found that the wind was from the northwest, and gave orders for the people to go to the rock-piles. In a few minutes several hundred men and women, girls and boys, were climbing a trail out of the valley at the lower end of the cliffs. They went on foot, Sinopah's father leading him and helping him up over the hardest places. Not until all of the climbers had reached the top of the cliff, and disappeared out on the plain, did old Red Crane start. He rode a small, swift horse that was covered with a buffalo robe, and himself wore a robe of the same kind. He went some distance down the valley and climbed out of it by an easy, sloping trail.
Meantime Sinopah, with his father and the other people, had come to the top of the cliffs at their eastern end, and then turned westward along the edge of them. After walking a half-mile or more, they came to where they were highest and steepest, there being in that place a straight drop of morethan a hundred feet to the boulder-covered slope below. Here on top of the cliff, a little way back from the brink and a hundred yards apart, began two ever-widening rows of rock-piles that extended out on the plain for more than a mile like an enormous letter V. Beyond them was a low ridge, and still farther north another ridge, on which a large herd of buffalo were feeding.
White Wolf now turned to the people and told them to hurry and conceal themselves behind the piles of rock, and they scattered out along the two lines of the V, one or two and sometimes three people stopping and lying down beside each pile. Sinopah was very impatient: he kept jerking his father's hand and asking questions, but for what seemed to him a long time the chief would not answer.
At last not one person was to be seen out there on the plain: nothing was in sight but the rows of rock-piles, and far away the black mass of feeding buffalo. Then White Wolflifted the boy up on his shoulder and began to explain: "Pretty soon you will see your grandfather riding out toward that first ridge," he said, "so watch for him."
Sinopah looked for the old man; looked so hard that water came to his eyes and he had to wipe it away. When he looked off again, he saw what appeared to be a small, single buffalo climbing the first ridge out toward the buffalo herd. His father told him that the object was his grandfather on horseback. The old man was lying down on the animal, so as to make it appear that it had a high, humped back, and covered as both he and the horse were with buffalo robes, they did, indeed, together look like a small buffalo.
From the top of the ridge the plain extended out with an even rise to the next ridge, on which the herd was feeding. As soon as the old man reached it, he began to ride in circles, each time nearer and nearer those whose attention he sought to attract.And quite often he tickled the horse between the legs with a stick, making it kick up its heels in a very funny manner.
"If you were there," the chief told Sinopah, "you would hear your grandfather making a very queer moaning sound—m-m-m-ah! m-m-m-ah!—just as a buffalo calf does when it is in pain, or is frightened."
"M-m-m-ah! m-m-m-ah!" Sinopah repeated. "I will learn to do that well," he said, "and when I am grown up I will call the buffalo to the pis-kan."
"Well, then, watch! Watch closely: you are going to see a very strange thing pretty soon," his father told him.
At first the big herd of buffalo feeding on the far ridge paid no attention to the object circling toward them, thinking, no doubt, that it was one of their own kind just wandering around. But when it kicked up its heels, first one of the old bulls and then another raised its head and began to stare. Then, when it was close enough for itsplaintivem-m-m-ahcries to be heard, the cows began to take notice, thinking that what they saw was a calf in distress. Several of them walked toward it a little way, sniffing the air, but the wind was wrong for them and their noses could get no scent of it.
"Now! Now watch closely, little son," said father, and the boy stared harder than ever.
One of the big cows suddenly started and ran forward a few rods, and the whole herd moved, too, and gathered in a close bunch behind her. Thus they stood for a few moments, staring and tossing their heads, and then, led by the big old cow, down the ridge they came with a tremendous rattle and thunder of hoofs, and raising a thick cloud of dust behind them.
This was what old Red Crane on his little horse had been praying for, and now he turned and rode swiftly toward the wide gap of the V-shaped rock-piles. And swift as he rode, the buffalo were swifter and gained on him steadily.
"Oh! Oh! They will catch up with him and trample him to death," Sinopah cried in terror.
"No, no, he is not in danger," his father answered; "watch closely now."
In a few minutes Red Crane rode within the V, the buffalo right after him, and soon the whole herd was in it, too. Then, as the tail end of the band passed rock-pile after rock-pile, the people lying behind the heaps sprang up and shouted, and wildly waved their robes. That scared the rear animals, that alone could see and hear the people, and they ran harder than ever, so crowding those in front to run faster and faster. The band was nearing the cliff now, and were almost on top of Red Crane and his little horse. Then it was that he suddenly turned and rode straight east between two of the rock-piles of that side of the great V. Turning to follow him,—the lead cows still thought they were running to the rescue of a calf in trouble,—the herd saw peoplejump up from behind the rocks, and were now for the first time as badly frightened as were those in the rear. Quick as a flash they turned from that danger and headed west, only to be confronted with people rising from the rock-piles on that side of the V. Here, now, were people on each side, and people back whence they had come. But none were to be seen to the south, and southward they turned, running faster than ever in their great terror. Red Crane was now safe. Sitting on his dripping horse, he watched the animals go, and raised a prayer to the gods and his little secret helper, asking that the buffalo should keep straight on.
THEN IT WAS THAT HE SUDDENLY TURNED
THEN IT WAS THAT HE SUDDENLY TURNED
In the mean time White Wolf had run with Sinopah to the edge of the cliff, and several hundred yards east of the place where the two lines of the V came close together, and there the two waited to see the end of it all.
Here, now, was the most anxious moment and the greatest danger; the leaders of the herd might turn before coming to the cliff,trample the people behind one or the other of the rows of rock-piles, and so circle back to the plain in safety. But no! They kept straight on; and Sinopah, watching them with staring eyes and open mouth, was never so excited in his life: he felt as if he was going to burst from the dreadful danger of it all; the terrible thunder of hoofs; the wicked gleams of wild black eyes set in shaggy hair.
And now the leaders of the herd saw the edge of the cliff, and tried to stop and turn to one side. But those behind them could not see it and kept pressing forward with tremendous and irresistible force. There could be no stopping. The leaders were swiftly pushed off from the cliff, and following them went the living stream of the herd, whirling and whirling through the air, falling, falling from that sheer height, and crashing down onto the boulders at the foot of the cliff. Hundreds of the buffalo went over the ledge, and only the last end of the herd, just a few animals, turned at the lastmoment and escaped through the people to the plain.
Most of those that went over the cliff were killed outright by the fall, and those only crippled were soon put out of their misery by the hunters down there. Then began the skinning of the animals and the cutting-up of the meat and carrying it to the lodges in the camp. When night came the work was all done and the people rested and were happy. Pretty soon the moon came up and old Red Crane took Sinopah outside. Over at the foot of the cliff wolves and coyotes and foxes were howling and yelping as they fed on the bones and bits of meat that had been left there. "Listen to our little brothers," he said. "It is a great feast that we are giving them this night."
In some such way in the long ago, our own ancestors used to trap their food. That was when they had no weapons but the bow and arrow and flint knife, and meat and wild berries were all they had to eat.
Winter was now come, but the people were very comfortable in their lodges in the Two Medicine Valley. After all, the winters are very mild on the plains close under the Rocky Mountains in Montana. Sometimes a blizzard swoops down from the north, bringing some snow and intense cold, but it seldom lasts long. Within a few days a Chinook wind comes out of the west, a wind that started from the Japan Current of the Pacific Ocean, eight hundred miles away, and this is so warm that it kills the blizzard and melts the snow. Sometimes, even in January, this wind is so very warm that it makes the air feel as if summer had really come. This is the way it usually is on the northern Montana plains in winter. But about once in twentyyears the north wind keeps the west wind back for a couple of months or more. Then the snow falls deep, and the thermometer stays away down below zero, and the animals and birds die by the hundred. At such a time I have seen more than a hundred antelope, a whole band, lying frozen to death on the plain.
This was a good winter; too good, the boys and girls thought, for they wanted the river to freeze over so they could play on the ice. So it was that one night when Sinopah was going to crawl into his warm buffalo-robe couch, he made a short prayer to Ai-sto-yim-sta, Cold-Maker. He was the god who lived in the north, and who made raids into the southland, hidden always in the swirling snow of the terrible blizzards he made.
"Hai-yu, Ai-sto-yim-sta," little Sinopah piped shrilly, "have pity on all of us children. Come quickly; come this night and make ice for us to play on."
His mother heard him and cried out to White Wolf: "Now what do you think this naughty boy is doing? He prays Cold-Maker to come and make ice for him."
"Is it so!" his father exclaimed. "Sinopah, come here. I have something to say. Now, listen!" he went on, when he had the boy close in his arms. "Cold-Maker is a bad god, and you must never pray to him to come. He is not like the Sun, the great giver of life; he is the giver of death. Many and many a one of our people he has done to death. You pray him to come and make ice. Well, away out there on the plains are many of our hunters. They are coming slowly toward camp; very slowly because their horses are carrying heavy loads of meat for the women and children, and hides to be tanned into soft, warm robes. Now, suppose that Cold-Maker does come; come now, this night? You will have the ice to play on, yes. But other children will have no fathers: they will be lying dead out on the plain."
"Oh, I didn't think of that," said Sinopah. "Cold-Maker is a bad god. I will never pray again to him. But I would like to have some ice."
"The ice will come soon enough," said White Wolf. "Now, go you to your robes and sleep."
It was not long after this that there would be heavy white frost on the trees and the grass in the early morning, and thin ice along the edge of the river in the still places. Little by little this ice thickened and crept out from the shore, so that White Wolf had to break it when he carried Sinopah with him for the daily bath. When the two of them plunged into the cold water they shivered and cried, "Ah-ha-ha-ha-ah!" and shrank from the feel of it; but oh, how good they felt, when back in the warm lodge. And then one morning when they went to the river, they found it frozen clear across, the ice so thick that White Wolf had to get a heavy piece of drift and break a hole in it for a bathing-place.
"Oh, hurry! hurry!" Sinopah cried. "I want to get back to the lodge and put on my clothes, and come out here to play."
But his mother would not let him start out until he had eaten all of the fat meat on a roasted buffalo rib. Then, taking up his top and the whipper for it, away he ran to the river where nearly all the children of the camp were playing on the ice, nearly all of them spinning tops.
Sinopah had a fine top that his grandfather made for him from the tip of a buffalo bull horn. It was about three inches long, an inch or more in diameter, flat on the upper end, and dull-pointed. There was no string for it, as the spinning was done with a whip. This was a slender stick about two feet long, to an end of which were tied three or four fine buckskin strings about a foot and a half in length. The top was started spinning on the ice with the thumb and middle finger of the left hand, and then lashed frequently with the whip to keep it spinning.A favorite play was for three or four children to start their tops at the same time, each one trying to make his top spin the longest.
As usual Lone Bull and the little girl Otaki, Sinopah's best friends, were with him this morning and the three spun their tops together, sometimes one and sometimes another of them winning the long-time game. Sinopah won most of the games, though, and he began to think that he could spin tops as well as any one of the great crowd of children there on the ice. When he had won three games, one after another, from Lone Bull and Otaki, he was sure that he was the best player of all, and said so.
Crow Foot, a boy older by some years, heard the boast and cried out: "You say that you are the best spinner here? Well, I say that I am the best. Come on, and we will see whose words are true. We will start spinning our tops at the same time, and the one of us who spins his longest shall win the other's top."
"Don't you do it, Sinopah," said Lone Bull. "He is bigger than you; he has spun tops two or three winters before we commenced; he will surely win your top."
"Yes, and such a nice top it is, and his only an old wooden one," said Otaki. "Don't play with him."
"Oh, I am not afraid; I can win," said Sinopah.
And in another moment the two boys were spinning their tops in the centre of a big crowd of children. No one spoke or moved; the only sound to be heard was the swish and slat of the whip-lashes, and the dull buzzing of the tops on the ice.
After a long time Crow Foot made a mis-strike with his whip and the top wobbled. "He loses," the children cried; but no, he made another quick snatch at it and it righted up.
Then Sinopah's top spun into a small, rough place in the ice and began to jump. "Oh, Sinopah! be careful; take courage,"the crowd shouted at him, and just then he made a hard stroke with the whip that knocked the top over on its side and sent it rolling into the crowd. Crow Foot snatched up his top, chased the other one and recovered it, and danced around holding both up in the air, shouting: "I win the bull-horn top! I win Sinopah's fine, black horn top."
Sinopah cried. Lone Bull and Otaki tried to comfort him, but he cried all the harder and kept saying: "Oh, my top! It is gone. What will my grandfather say? He worked so long to make it for me. Oh, I want my grandfather; maybe he will get it back for me."
Grandfather was right there; he was never far away from the boy, always watching to see that he came to no harm.
"Now, what is the trouble?" he asked; but Sinopah was crying so hard that he could not answer, and so Lone Bull told him how Crow Foot had won the top.
"Well, well. That is bad," said the oldman, and he led Sinopah away up the river, Lone Bull and Otaki going also.
"You mustn't cry. No matter what happens, you must not cry," Red Crane began. "Women and girls may cry, but boys and men never."
"But, grandfather, my top! Crow Foot has it; he won it from me. Will you get it back for me?" Sinopah whimpered.
"I will not," Red Crane answered. "This is going to be a lesson to you. Remember this—you, too, Lone Bull: those who gamble are always poor. Also, gamblers are not good men: they use up so much time playing games that they seldom hunt, and their women and children have not enough meat to eat. Neither are they of any account in war. If all our men gambled, the enemy would soon kill us all off."
"But, grandfather, I have no top now," said Sinopah, doing his best not to cry any more, "and see how clear and hard the ice is. I want to spin a top on it."
"Well, if you are very good, and will promise never to gamble again, I will begin making you another top to-morrow," said the old man. "Now, you will all go with me after some red willow. I want the bark of it to mix with my tobacco. There is a fine patch of it growing close to the shore above here."
Never was there clearer ice than that on the river this morning. It was as clear as a glass window pane. Everything in the water under it could be seen plainly, the rocks, gravel, and sand of the bottom, and the trout lying almost still in the deep places.
While they stood looking down at a very large trout, suddenly a long, slender, dark brown animal with big, webbed hind feet, came swimming down into the deep hole. The trout saw it and turned and swam like a flash toward the branches of a sunken tree. The animal was a faster swimmer; it went so fast after the trout that it was just a brown streak in the water, and it caught the fish,and, holding it crosswise in its mouth, started to swim back upstream.
"Ha! Am-on-is" (otter), "killer of fish," old Red Crane cried, and stamped on the ice.
That frightened the otter; it let go of the bleeding and dying trout and swam away downstream.
"O-kye-hai! You children down there," Red Crane shouted, "spread out and stamp on the ice. Scare back an otter swimming toward you."
There must have been all of a hundred children in the top-spinning crowd. The old man had to shout two or three times to make them understand, and then they all spread out and stamped the ice with their feet, and pounded it with their tops and whips, making altogether a terrible noise.
Old Red Crane, in the mean time, had gone to the shore and picked up a rock bigger than his head, and now he stood with it raised high above his head watching for theotter to come back. This it soon did, the children below having scared it, and now it swam close to the shore where the bank went straight down, hoping to find an air-hole, or a beaver-hole into which it could crawl, and then climb up into the beaver's sleeping-place above the water, where there would be plenty of air.
There was no hole of any kind, except an open place in some rapids quite a long way above, and the otter had to breathe before it could get back to that place. Its lungs were full of air, and it had to let it out and draw it in again, or die. So when it was quite close under Red Crane, it rose to the under surface of the ice and blew out the air against it, a great long wide silvery bubble. But before it could breathe it in again, Red Crane dashed the rock down right over it.Crash! went the brittle ice, the jar scattering the big bubble into a hundred little bubbles, and frightening the otter away at the same time. There it was without air in its lungs, and noway to get any except at the hole at the rapids, so far, far away. That place the poor animal tried to reach. It swam slower and slower, Red Crane and the children following it. Very soon it had to expand its lungs, and as there was no air, water instead flowed in through its nose and filled them. That was the end. The animal gave a few feeble kicks, then sank to the bottom of the river, and lay still. It was dead. Dead from want of that little bubble of air it had lost. Could it have kept that, letting it out against the ice, and then drawing it in again, it could have traveled for miles, or until it came to an open place where it could crawl out of the water.
Grandfather Red Crane was all excited now. "Who would have thought we would get a medicine animal so easy as that?" he said. "It was just lucky that it stopped to make its bubble in front of me. But it is a good sign. Sinopah, we will save the skin for you. When you grow up we will make abow-and-arrow case of it for you, and I know that it will bring you good luck in war."
And with that he sent the children to camp after an axe with which he chopped a hole in the ice. Then he fished out the otter with a forked pole. It was a big otter; all of four feet long from the nose to the tip of its tail. The old man forgot all about the red willow, and dragging the animal, and the children following, he went straight back to camp, where he carefully took off its fine furred hide and stretched it to dry in the right shape.
"It is time for our son to learn to use the bow," said White Wolf one evening when all the family was sitting in the light and warmth of the little lodge fire.
"Ai! So it is," old Red Crane exclaimed. "I will begin work on one for him to-morrow, and it shall not be a wooden bow; it shall be made of horn."
"I wouldn't take so much trouble as that," said White Wolf. "A bow of wood will be good enough for him to begin with."
"But what does my time amount to?" Red Crane asked. "I am old, old. I tell you it makes me sick when I see the younger men start out to hunt, or leave to make war against the enemy, and I can't go with them. All I can do now is to stay here in the camp. All I can do is to teach our little Sinopah;teach him to shoot and hunt; teach him to be good and kind and brave. My time is all for him. So it is that he shall have a fine little bow of horn."
"Father, don't you worry about these things," said White Wolf. "I can hunt for us all, and I can go to war. All I ask of you is to be happy. It is great work that you are doing for our little Sinopah. We are all glad that you do so much for him."
The next morning the old man went up in the hills with Sinopah to get some buffalo horns. They soon found the heads of some freshly killed animals, and took the horns from three of them, all big, shiny black horns of three- and four-year-old bulls. Back they went then to the valley and threw the horns into a hot spring, where they were to remain a couple of days and get soft.
On the third day old Red Crane took the horns out of the spring and found them so soft that they could be split with a knife aseasily as if they were just soft wood. So he took them home to the lodge and began making a bow, Sinopah watching every part of the work, and asking many questions about it, so that he could some day make such bows forhimself.
First, the old man cut the horns into long splints of different size, the larger ones an inch wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. The larger pieces were for the middle of the bow, the smaller ones for the ends, and all were neatly shaved, so as to lap closely one on the other,—to splice, as such work is called; all the pieces being stuck together with a very strong waterproof glue made by boiling down the hoofs of the buffalo. When this was done, the old man scraped the bow with sandstone, and then a knife, until from end to end it was as smooth as glass, and of the right shape, heavy and thick in the middle, and from there tapering each way out to the tips. Lastly, to make the bow all the stronger, and springy, he glued strips ofsinew to its whole outer length, and wrapped it with sinew bands about four inches apart. When finished, the bow was about three feet long.
The next thing was to string the bow with a fine cord of twisted sinew, and then the arrows were made, the shafts of straight, hard, heavy greasewood, the points of thin iron bought from the traders, and the feathering of quills of wild-goose wings.
The old man made eleven of these iron-pointed arrows, and then went to work on another shaft with which he took especial pains, working a whole evening in just scraping and polishing it, and soaking it full of grease. Sinopah, watching him, grew restless, and asked why he worked so long on just one arrow shaft.
"Because this is to be a medicine arrow; a lucky arrow," Red Crane replied.
He then took from his own quiver an arrow that had a very small, thin, sharp point of black obsidian, or natural glass. In theYellowstone country there is a whole mountain of such stuff.
"Now, I am going to take this point off and fasten it on this shaft," said the old man, "and you are never to use it except when in danger. My father made the point for me, and three different times it has saved my life. By that you can see it is great medicine."
"Oh, grandfather! Tell me about it," said Sinopah, snuggling up to him and hanging onto his hand so that he could not work.
"Well, you shall hear," the old man answered, lifting the boy into his lap and smoothing the hair back from his forehead. "Ai! But the first time was long ago. Why, I was not much older than you are now. My father had made a horn bow and twelve arrows for me. Eleven of the arrows had common white flint points and the twelfth one carried this fine black one. Just as I tell you now, my father told me then: I was not to use it except when in great danger.
"One day I went hunting with two boyfriends. It was a very hot day and we walked in the timber close to the river. In my left hand I carried my bow and two arrows; one a common arrow, the other having this medicine point. All the rest of the arrows were in a quiver slung at my back.
"My two friends walked in the middle of the timber and near the river, and I kept at the outer edge of it. After a long time I came to a very thick patch of willows, so very thick that I could not see into it. In there I heard a queer noise; a snuffling noise, and little faint cries as of something in great pain, just such a noise as a dog makes when it is badly hurt. I thought it was a dog, one of our camp dogs, that had got hurt and had come out there to die. So I pushed into the thicket, and suddenly came face to face with a big wolf. Now, wolves, as you know, never harm any one. They are afraid of man. But this wolf was different. A big fluff of white foam covered its mouth, and by that I knew it was a mad wolf, and very dangerous. Whenit saw me it raised up and made ready to jump at me, and at the same time I fitted the medicine arrow to my bow. The wolf opened its mouth and made ready to jump at me, and I shot the arrow right down its throat. It did jump, but never touched me. It fell almost at my feet and died, and I got back the arrow.
"The next time I used the arrow-point was some winters later. I had grown to be a man. I had taken the point off from the little arrow-shaft, and fitted it onto one such as men use. I had been running buffalo one day, and killed four with my common arrows. Then I shot a big, fat cow, and at the same time my horse fell and broke its leg. The cow was only wounded, and very mad. She charged me and I jumped to one side and fired a common arrow at her; it only stuck in her shoulder.
"Four times she turned and charged me, and four times I fired an arrow, but none of them did any good. I had but the one arrowleft, this one with the medicine point. I made a little prayer, fitted it to the bow, and then shot it when the cow turned to charge me again. Straight into her heart it went and down she fell, and I was saved."
"Yes, that makes two times; now tell about the last one," said Sinopah, for the old man had stopped talking and was looking with dreamy eyes at the fire.
"Oh, yes, the last time," Red Crane answered, sitting up straight again. "No. I will not tell you about that, because you might have bad dreams about it. All I can say is that I had a fight with a Crow chief and killed him with the medicine arrow."
Sinopah wanted to know all about the fight, but he had now become very sleepy, and was put on his couch before he had time to ask more questions.
On the next day old Red Crane made more arrow shafts, these being made sharp at the end, instead of having iron points. They were for shooting at marks, and for a longtime the old man made Sinopah practice with them every day. At first he shot them at little sagebrush bushes, or a piece of robe thrown onto a bush; but after a couple of moons he was taught to shoot at a ball of grass thrown up in the air. He became so skillful that he could pierce it nearly every time.
Then, one morning after the early bath in a hole cut in the ice, old Red Crane took Sinopah out to hunt with the real arrows. It was a very cold morning; the trees were covered with thick, white frost, and all up and down the valley they were popping with a noise like rifle-shots, while the ice on the river heaved and cracked with a rumbling like that of far-off thunder.
Not far below the camp they heard prairie chickens (sharp-tailed grouse) clucking, and presently saw a number of them sitting in a small cottonwood tree. The birds felt so cold that they sat all crouched on the tree limbs, and paid no attention to the man and boy approaching them.
"Well, you are close enough to them now," Red Crane told Sinopah when they had got so near that they could see the shiny black eyes of the chickens.
Sinopah dropped his robe then and fitted an arrow to his bow, one of the arrows with iron point, and took aim at a bird at the top of the tree.
"No, no! You must not shoot that one," Red Crane said, "for it would drop fluttering down among the rest and scare them all away. Shoot at the very lowest bird in the tree."
Sinopah took quick aim and let the arrow fly; and as the bow-cord twanged the chicken fell down from the limb with the arrow in it, and after a few flutters of its wings lay still on the blood-stained snow. Sinopah never said a word, but his snapping eyes showed how excited and happy he was as he shot another arrow at the next lowest bird in the tree.
This time he missed, but a third arrowbrought the chicken down, and three more arrows got two more birds. He was about to shoot at a fifth bird when Red Crane seized his arm: "That is enough," he said. "You have one for your mother, one for your father, one for yourself, and one for me. Remember this: the gods do not love wasters of life. They made the animals and birds for our use, but we may kill no more than we need."
Sinopah never forgot that. Afterwards, during all his life, he was careful never uselessly to take the life of beast or bird. Most of the white hunters of our country have not done that. They have killed the buffalo and deer, the pigeons and ducks and other birds, just for the fun of seeing them die. Had they shot only just enough for food, there would still be plenty of game from one end to the other of our great land.
Having picked up the four chickens, and the arrows that had been shot, the old man and the little hunter started back towardhome. Had you been in Sinopah's place, without mittens on that cold morning, you would have had your fingers frozen stiff. But he never felt the cold, and his hands were almost as active as on a summer morning. That was because he had to bathe in the frozen river every day.
On their way through the timber near camp they saw a cotton-tail rabbit sitting in the edge of a rose-brush thicket. "I would like to have it," said Red Crane, "but not unless you can kill it when it is running. Now, fit an arrow to your bow and see what you can do when I throw one of these chickens that way."
They were only forty or fifty feet from the rabbit. The old man tossed a chicken and the little animal started off on the jump through the snow, passing right in front of Sinopah. He aimed about a foot ahead of it, andzip! the arrow struck it fairly just behind the shoulder. It was a fine shot. Sinopah shouted as he ran to pick it up, and whenhe returned and held the rabbit up before Red Crane, the old man shouted too and made a little prayer of thanks to the gods. "Never was there such a fine boy as this one you have given us," he said.