Pitamakan

“ We then hobbled all but two, Is-spai-u and Pitamakan's buffalo horse, which we picketed with long ropes. By turns we watched our little band during the short night and at sunrise drove them back to the barricade.
"Boys," Tsistsaki said to us after we had finished breakfast, "I have something to say to you before you sleep."
"Say it! We are all but asleep now," Pitamakan answered from his couch.
"It is this: you must not take your horses to-night to feed where you had them last night; every night you must drive them to a different place." ”

“ The loss of the furs, for which we had worked so hard all winter, was not easy to bear. Every few minutes Pitamakan would cry out to his gods to punish the thieves, and my heart was as sore against them as his. With the fur packs we had lost also our fire-drill and socket piece.
"But that doesn't matter," Pitamakan said. "We have good bows and can make a drill at any time. Perhaps we shall never again have any use for one!"
"How so? Are we never to eat again? Shall we not need fire of nights to keep us warm?" ”

“ The medicine-man, with many prayers and sacrifices to the gods, would occasionally take a strip of the fur to wrap round the roll containing his sacred pipe.
Pitamakan himself was somewhat averse to our making any use of the black bear's hide, but when I offered to do all the work of scraping off the fat meat and of drying it, he consented to sleep on it once with me, as an experiment, and if his dreams were good, to continue to use it. ”

“ I could not believe it possible for us to go without eating as long as Pitamakan said his people were able to fast. Worse still, I saw no possible way for us to get food. When I said as much to Pitamakan, he laughed.
"Take courage; don't be an afraid person," he said. "Say to yourself, 'I am not hungry,' and keep saying it, and soon it will be the truth to you. But we will not fast very long. Why, if it were necessary, I would get meat for us this very night." ”

“ Day came long before the sun rose above the tremendous peaks that separated us from the plains. Much as we ached to crawl out of the cave and run and jump, we lay still until the sun had warmed the air a bit. The night before I had been ravenously hungry; but now my hunger had largely passed, and Pitamakan said that I would soon forget all about food.
"But we can't live all winter without eating!" I objected.
"Of course not," he replied. "As soon as we have fire, we will go hunting and kill game. Then we will make us a comfortable lodge. ”

“ We stood still for some time, while we searched the prairie and the mountain-side for sign of the enemy.
"They seem all to have taken our trail," said Pitamakan, at last, "and maybe that is the way of it. If one has remained to watch the horses, he must be lying in that little pine grove near them. ”

“ Pitamakan muttered, rising stiffly, while the ice on his leggings crackled, "why, I'll cut off a braid of my hair."
I was now sure that our troubles had weakened his mind; no Indian in his right senses would think of cutting off his hair.
"Pitamakan! What is the trouble with you?" I asked, looking up anxiously at him.
"Why, nothing is the matter," he replied. "Nothing is the matter. We must now try to work the drill with a bow. If our moccasin strings are too rotten to bear the strain, I'll have to make a bow cord by cutting off some of my hair and braiding it." ”

“ I remembered how worried my uncle was when I had left our lodge; how serious was the expression of Abbott's eyes when he predicted that the attack by the cut-throats was about to take place.
I stared at the faint, moonlit outlines of the Moccasin Mountains, away off to the southwest. Somewhere along the trail at the foot of them the Pikuni were doubtless camping that night. Unwittingly I cried out in Blackfoot, "Oh, hurry! Hurry to us, you men of the Pikuni, else you will come too late!"
"What? What did you say? Do you see enemies?" Pitamakan whispered as he sat up suddenly at my side. ”

“ More than once during the night our hearts went thumpety-thump at the approach of dim and shadowy objects, but the objects always proved to be elk or deer. Pitamakan watched the river trail, I the breaks from the middle edge of the grove; Abbott had his stand at the upper end. Along toward morning I got a real scare when an animal that I thought was a stray buffalo proved to be a big grizzly coming straight toward me. ”

“ Pitamakan exclaimed, in a cheerful voice. "The bear has been here and made himself a bed for the winter; they always do that in the month of falling leaves. He isn't here now, though, and if he does come we will yell loud and scare him away." ”

“ We have to make strong medicine, brother, to escape them."
This was the first of the terrific winter winds that blow across the Northwest plains. Many a time thereafter we heard the strange roaring sound that seemed to come from nowhere in particular; but down in the valley, and even high up on the sides of the mountains, near the lodge, there was never more than a gentle breeze. Pitamakan was always depressed when we heard the strange roaring, and it made me feel nervous and apprehensive of I knew not what. ”

“ They've got a whole lot more heart than their men, those women have!" Abbott exclaimed.
My uncle took Tsistsaki by the hand, and we all four went out to the river-bank. The fight was over, and the Pikuni on horseback and on foot were going about counting the dead cut-throats and counting coup upon them, too. Whereupon Pitamakan cried, "How could I have forgotten? I have a coup to count down there in the timber." ”

“ Pitamakan let fly an arrow at one of them, but it fell short of the mark.
There were game trails everywhere. The falling snow was fast filling them, so that we could not distinguish new tracks from old; but after traveling a half-mile or so, we began to see the animals themselves, elk and deer, singly, and in little bands. As we approached a tangle of red willows, a bull, a cow, and a calf moose rose from the beds they had made in them. The cow and calf trotted away, but the bull, his hair all bristling forward, walked a few steps toward us, shaking his big, broad-horned head. ”

“ It was a terrible night.
"We can't go on!" said Pitamakan. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Bears do not lie down for their winter sleep until the snow has covered up their food. We must go back and take our chance of one being there in that hole."
We felt our way along the foot of the cliff until we came to the place. There we knelt down, hand in hand, sniffed once more, and exclaimed, "Kyaiyo!" (Bear!)
"But not strong; only a little odor, as if one had been here last winter," Pitamakan added. "The scent of one sticks in a place a long time." ”

“ A frequent visitor in our cozy room in the fort was a nephew of Tsistsaki, a boy several years older than I. We liked each other at sight, and every time we met we became firmer friends than ever. "Friend" means much more to Indians—at least, to the Blackfeet—than it does to white people. Once friends, Indians are always friends. They almost never quarrel. So it came to be with Pitamakan (Eagle Running) and myself.
My uncle Wesley was as much pleased as his wife. One day he said to me, "Pitamakan is an honest, good-hearted boy, and brave, too. ”

“ He gets all that from his father, who is one of the very best and most trustworthy Indians in all this country, and from his mother, who is a woman of fine character. See to it that you keep his friendship."
Except, of course, Baptiste Rondin, the hunter of the fort, Pitamakan was almost the only one with whom I was allowed to go after the buffalo and the other game which swarmed on the plains near by. What with my daily studies, occasional hunts, and the constant pleasure I had in the life of the fort, time fairly flew; no day was too long. ”

“ A fine early morning breeze was blowing down the valley. I called Pitamakan's attention to it, and said that, if the enemy were concealed in the timber, the bighorns would apprise us of the fact. Bighorns leave their cliffs and steep slopes only when need of water or of food compels them to do so. Those we were watching traveled freely enough down the slope, but the moment they stepped out upon the level bottom land they became timid, advancing but a few steps at a time and pausing to sniff the air and stare in all directions. ”

“ Sitting within the lodge, we always had the feeling that the enemy might be close by, waiting to shoot us when we stepped outside. On the daily rounds of our traps we were ever watching places where a foe might be lying in wait. Pitamakan said that the only thing for us to do was to make strong medicine. ”

“ As time passed, we set more and more deadfalls up and down the valley, so many that finally we could not make the round of them all in one day. One morning we would attend to those lying east of the lodge, and the next morning visit those to the west of it. The farthest one to the west was at least seven miles away, and for some unknown reason more fur came to it than to any of the others; we seldom visited it without finding a marten or a fisher. Pitamakan called it the nat-o-wap-i kyak-ach-is—medicine-trap, as the words may be freely translated. ”

“ But for all that, the future was very uncertain; there were many things that might prevent our ever reaching the Missouri; all nature was arrayed against us, and so was man himself.
Pitamakan roused me from my reverie by a tap on the shoulder.
"I can see no goat signs here above us," he said, "but look over there at the ledges well up on the next mountain to the east. Do you see the fresh trails?"
I did. In the smooth, glittering snow they were startlingly distinct in their windings and turnings from clump to clump of the pines on the rocky ledges. ”

“ We have not the eyes of the gods to see right through the trees and brush and discover what they conceal. Watch as we may, a war party can easily come right down to the mouth of this stream and attack the log-cutters or charge our barricade, and we never know of their approach until we hear their shots and yells!"
"What you say is plain truth!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "But well you know that Far Thunder is a wise chief. He does not expect us to do the impossible ”

“ We remained outside, watching the valley and counting up the record of his terrible deeds, so far as we knew them. Trading entirely with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, he had always been an enemy of the American Fur Company and at various times had waylaid and killed eight of its trappers. Pitamakan said that he had killed four men and seven women of his tribe, and then recounted the well-known tale of his fight with Big Lake.
Leading about a hundred mounted warriors, Sliding Beaver had approached a camp of the Pikuni and signaled that he had come to fight its chief. ”

“ As night came on, we sat down before the blaze in a cheerful mood, and straightway began to make plans for the future, which now seemed less dark than at the beginning of the day.
"With a better bow and better arrows, it is certain that we can kill enough grouse to keep us alive," I said.
"Not unless we have snowshoes to travel on," Pitamakan objected. "In a few days the snow will be so deep that we can no longer wade in it." ”

“ To our great astonishment the night passed without the Crows appearing either at the grove or at the barricade. We did not know what to think. Was it possible, Abbott asked, that the party was homeward bound to the Crow country across the Yellowstone after an unsuccessful raid north of the Missouri?
"War parties seldom go home on foot," Pitamakan well replied.
As soon as my uncle came into the timber with the men and placed his guards and set the six to work we three watchers returned to the barricade, had breakfast, and turned in for the sleep we so much needed. ”

“ It was all aglow with fires shining yellow through the buffalo-leather lodge skins. Drums were booming; people were singing, laughing, and dancing; children were shouting; horses were impatiently whinnying for their mates; and dogs were howling defiance to their wild kin of the plains, the deep-voiced wolves and shrill-yelping coyotes. We paused but a moment, listening to it all, and hurried on down to the camp of the Pikuni and the lodge of White Wolf, chief of the Small Robes Clan, brother of Tsistsaki and father of my chum, Pitamakan—Running Eagle. ”

“ Finally, commanding silence, he said to us, in very poor Blackfoot:—
"As you are only boys, we will not kill you. Return to your chief, and tell him that we keep our beaver for ourselves, just as the plains people keep the buffalo for themselves. Now go."
There was nothing to do but obey him, and we started. One man followed us a few steps, and struck Pitamakan several blows across the back with his whip. At that my friend broke out crying; not because of the pain, but because of the terrible humiliation. To be struck by any one was the greatest of all insults ”

“ As we rode on we kept looking for the trail of dust raised by thousands of dragging, sharp-pointed lodge poles and travois and horses' hoofs, that would mark the advance of the Pikuni. We were not long in reaching Crooked Creek, and there at the rim of the valley we parted, Pitamakan to go due west toward the buttes of It-Crushed-Them Creek, I to follow up the stream. At the head of it, close to the foot of the mountains, he said, I should find the deep, well-worn trail of the Pikuni, which ran straight east past the foot of Black Butte to the Musselshell. ”

“ They would have wiped us out, had not the Twins discovered them down there in the timber. Now they plan to make us go mad from want of water and then wipe us out."
"You women, how much water have you?" Tsistsaki asked.
One by one they answered; there was not a bucketful in any lodge!
"Far Thunder, it is now time for my almost-brother and me to go after our people," Pitamakan said to my uncle impressively.
"It is! Go—as fast as you can!" he replied.
"I ride Is-spai-u," I said.
"You do not! He is our shield, it seems. You ride your own runner!" ”