There was tranquillity in the warm lodge of Waumdisapa, chief of the Tetons. It was always peaceful there for it is the duty of a head man to render his people harmonious and happy—but it was doubly tranquil on this midwinter day, for a mighty tumult had arisen in the tops of the tall willows, and across the grass of the bleak plain an icy dust was wildly sliding. Nearly all the men of the band were in camp, so fierce was the blast.
Waumdisapa listened tranquilly to the streams of snow lashing his tepee’s cap and felt it on his palm as it occasionally sifted down through the smoke-vent, and said, “The demons may howl and the white sands slide—my people are safe here behind the hills. With food and plenty of blankets we can wait.”
Hour by hour he smoked, or gravely meditated, his mind filled with the pursuits and dangers of the past. Now and again as an aged wrinkled warrior lifted the door-flap he was invited to enter to partake of tobacco and to talk of the gathering spirits of winter.
In a neighboring lodge the chief’s wife was at work beside her kettle singing a low song as she minded her fire, and through the roaring, whistling, moaning riot of the air-sprites other women could be heard cheerfully beating their way from fire to fire. A few hunters were still abroad, but no one was alarmed about them. The tempest was a subject of jest and comparison with other days. No one feared its grim power. Was it not a part of nature, an enemy always to be met!
Suddenly the sound of a moaning cry broke in upon the chief’s meditation. The tent-door was violently thrown up and with a hoarse wail, Oma, a young widow, entered the lodge, and threwherself before the feet of Waumdisapa. “My baby! My little boy is lost in the snow. O father, pity me—help me!”
Quickly the chief questioned her. “Where?”
“Out there!” she motioned with her hand—a wild gesture toward the bleak remorseless north. “I was with my brothers hunting the buffalo—the storm came on—my baby wandered away from the camp. We could not find him. They came away—taking me, too. They would not let me stay. Send hunters—find him. Take pity on me, my father!”
The chief turned to her brothers (who had followed her and were looking on with sad faces) and said, “Is this true?”
“It is!” they said. “We were in temporary camp. We were resting. The tempest leaped upon us. All was in confusion. The baby wandered away—the snow must have covered him quickly. We could not find him though we searched hard and long. The storm grew. Some of us came on to bring the women and children to camp. Three of us, my brothers and I, remained to look for the boy. We could not find him. He is buried deep in the snow.”
The chief, touched by the woman’s agony, rose in reproof. “Go back!” he said, sternly. “Take other of the young men. Cover every foot of ground near your camp.”
“The night is coming.”
“No matter—search!” commanded the chief.
A party of braves was soon made up. As they rode away into the blast Oma wished to go with them, but the chief prevented her.
All the afternoon she remained in the chief’s lodge crowding close to his feet—listening, moaning, waiting. She was weak with hunger, and shivering with cold, but she would not eat, would not go to her silent and lonely fireplace.
“No, no, father, I will stay with you,” she said.
Swiftly the darkness fell upon the camp. The cold intensified. The tempest increased in violence, howling above the willows likean army of flying demons. The snows beat upon the stout skins of the lodges and fell in heaps which grew ever higher, but the mothers of the camp came one by one, young and old, to comfort the stricken one, speaking words of cheer.
“They will bring him.”
“The brave hunters will find your boy.”
“They know no fear.”
“They have sharp eyes.”
“Their hearts are warm.”
“They will rescue him.”
Nevertheless, two by two the hardy trailers returned, cold, weary, covered with ice, their faces sad, their eyes downcast. “Blackness is on the plain,” they reported. “Nothing moves but the snow. We have searched hard. We have called, we have listened close, no voice replies. Nothing is to be seen, or heard.”
With each returning unsuccessful scout the mother’s grief and despair deepened. Heartbroken, she lay prone on the ground, her face in the dust, while the sorrowful songs of the women went on around her. Truly hers was a piteous plight.
“To lose one’s only child is sad. She has no man. She is alone.”
“The sun-god has forsaken her,” said one old woman. “He is angry. She has neglected some sacrifice.”
At last Hacone, the bravest, most persistent scout of all, one who loved Oma, came silently in and dropped exhausted beside the chieftain’s fire.
“Night, black stranger, has come,” he said, “I can search no longer. Twice I lost my way, twice my horse fell. Blinding was the wind. My breath was taken. Long I looked for the camp. The signal fires guided me. Dead is the child.”
With a whimper of anguish the poor mother fell back upon the floor and lay as one dead, hearing no sound. All night long her low moans went on—and the women who lifted and bore her awaysang songs of grief with intent to teach her that sorrow was the lot of all women and that happiness was but a brief spot of sunlight in a world of shadow.
The morning broke at last, still, cold, clear, and serene. The tall trees stood motionless to the tips as though congealed into iron, and the smoke of each fire rose slow as though afraid to leave the tepee’s mouth. Here and there an old woman scurried about bearing fuel. The dogs slunk through the camp whining with cold—holding up their half-frozen feet. The horses uneasily circled, brushing close against each other for warmth. Indeed it was a morning of merciless cruelty—the plain was a measureless realm of frost.
In Oma’s tent physical agony was added to grief, or so it seemed, but in truth the mother knew only sorrow. She was too deeply schooled by the terrors of the plains not to know how surely the work of the winter demon had been done. Somewhere out there her sweet little babe was lying stiff and stark in his icy bed—somewhere on the savage and relentless upland his small limbs were at the mercy of the cold.
One by one her friends reassembled to help her bear her loss—eager to offer food, quick to rebuild her fire—but she would not listen, could not face the cheerful flame. Meat and the glow of embers were of no avail to revive her frozen, hopeless heart.
The chief himself came at last to see her—to inquire again minutely of her loss. “We will seek further,” he said. “We will find the boy. We will bring him to you. Be patient.”
Suddenly a shout arose. “A white man! a white man!” and the warning cry carried forward from lip to lip announced the news to Waumdisapa.
“A white man comes—riding a pony and bearing something in his arms. He is within the camp circle!”
Hunting group examining tracks on the snowy groundFootprints in the SnowTo an old hunter, footprints in the snow are as an open book, and it was by these “signs” on the trail that the buffalo hunters knew the Sioux had crawled in upon the dispatch-bearer as he rested in a timbered bottom and poured in the bullets that put an end to his career. To the trooper, the plains white with snow had seemed lonely indeed, but, as he well knew, one could not, in those days, trust the plains to be as lonely as they looked, what with the possibility of Mr. Sitting Bull or Mr. Crazy Horse, with a band of his braves, popping out of some coulee, intent upon taking the scalp of any chance wayfarer.Illustration fromWHEN A DOCUMENT IS OFFICIALbyFrederic RemingtonOriginally published inHarper’s Magazine,September, 1899
Footprints in the SnowTo an old hunter, footprints in the snow are as an open book, and it was by these “signs” on the trail that the buffalo hunters knew the Sioux had crawled in upon the dispatch-bearer as he rested in a timbered bottom and poured in the bullets that put an end to his career. To the trooper, the plains white with snow had seemed lonely indeed, but, as he well knew, one could not, in those days, trust the plains to be as lonely as they looked, what with the possibility of Mr. Sitting Bull or Mr. Crazy Horse, with a band of his braves, popping out of some coulee, intent upon taking the scalp of any chance wayfarer.Illustration fromWHEN A DOCUMENT IS OFFICIALbyFrederic RemingtonOriginally published inHarper’s Magazine,September, 1899
To an old hunter, footprints in the snow are as an open book, and it was by these “signs” on the trail that the buffalo hunters knew the Sioux had crawled in upon the dispatch-bearer as he rested in a timbered bottom and poured in the bullets that put an end to his career. To the trooper, the plains white with snow had seemed lonely indeed, but, as he well knew, one could not, in those days, trust the plains to be as lonely as they looked, what with the possibility of Mr. Sitting Bull or Mr. Crazy Horse, with a band of his braves, popping out of some coulee, intent upon taking the scalp of any chance wayfarer.
Apache raiding group