CHAPTER IX
Crossing the valley from south to north in front of us, the snowshoetrail disappeared, a hundred yards away, in a clump of pines. TheIndian, brushing against a branch, had relieved it of its weight ofsnow, and its dark green foliage stood out in sharp contrast with theprevailing white. There was a chance that he might still be in thatthicket.
"We must know if he is there," said Pitamakan. "Though he didn't hear uswe must still know whence this enemy came, and why, and where he isgoing."
We began by going cautiously round the pines. From a distance, we couldsee the trail coming out of them on the farther side and going onstraight to the river, where the water fell in cascades over a wideseries of low, broken reefs. From there the trail followed the edge ofthe open water down past the last of the falls, and then showed plainon the frozen river as far as we could see.
Venturing now to follow it to the cascades, we learned at a glance, onarriving there, why the lone traveler had come into our peaceful valley.At the edge of the water the snow was all trampled down, and the printsof bare feet in it showed that the man had been wading in the river.Scattered on the packed snow were several fragments of dark green rock,one of which Pitamakan picked up and examined.
"This is what he came after," he said. "It is pipestone and very soft.Both the Kootenays and the Flatheads make their pipes of it because itis so easily worked into shape."
"Where do you think he came from?" I asked.
"From the camp of his people. These mountain Indians winter down alongtheir big lake. Very little snow falls there, and horse-feed is alwaysgood."
"Well, if he came from down there, why do we find his trail to thisplace coming straight across the valley from the south?"
"Ah, that is so!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "Come on! We must find out aboutthat."
We took the man's back trail, and, passing our deadfall, paused to notehow plainly it could be seen from several points along the way. It was awonder that he had noticed neither the deadfall nor our hard-packed,snowshoe trail.
"The gods were certainly good to us!" my partner exclaimed. "They causedhim to look the other way as he passed."
The back trail led us straight to the foot of the steep mountain risingfrom the valley. There, in several places, the snow was scraped away tothe ground, where evidently the man had searched for the pipestone ledgethat was probably exposed somewhere near. Failing to find it, he hadbeen obliged to go to the river and wade to the place where it againcropped out. His trail to the side hill came straight up the valley.
We certainly had something to think and talk about now--and also toworry about. Others of the enemy might come after pipestone, and therewas our trail running straight to the place. Going back to the deadfall,we took out the fisher, but did not reset the trap; for we determinednot to go thereafter within several miles of the pipestone falls.Another heavy snowfall would pretty much obliterate our trail, and weprayed that it would soon come. From that day, indeed, our sense ofpeace and security was gone.
Sitting within the lodge, we always had the feeling that the enemy mightbe close by, waiting to shoot us when we stepped outside. On the dailyrounds of our traps we were ever watching places where a foe might belying in wait. Pitamakan said that the only thing for us to do was tomake strong medicine. Accordingly, he gave our bearskin to the sun; helashed it firmly in the fork of a tree, and made a strong prayer to theshining god to guard us from being ambushed by the enemy.
Although we had long since lost track of the days of the week, we agreedin thinking that the discovery of the man's trail took place in "themoon before the moon when the web-feet come"; or, as the white man wouldsay, in February. At the end of the next moon, then,--in March,--springwould come on the plains. Up where we were, however, the snow would lastmuch longer--probably until May. Pitamakan said that we must leave thevalley long before then, because with the first signs of spring the deerwould be working back into the high mountains, and the Kootenays wouldfollow them.
"How can we do that when, as you say, the pass cannot be crossed untilsummer?" I asked.
"There is another pass to the south of us," he replied, "the TwoMedicine pass. There is no dangerous place anywhere along it."
"Then we can easily get out of here!" I exclaimed. "Let us start soon."
He shook his head. "No," he said. "We can't go until the snow melts fromthe low country where the Kootenays and Flatheads winter. We have to godown there to make our start on the Two Medicine trail."
"Why so?" said I, in surprise. "Why can't we go straight south from hereuntil we strike it?"
He laughed grimly.
"Between us and the trail lie many canons and many mountains that nonebut the birds can cross. Besides, along each stream is a trail used bythese Indians in their hunts up toward the backbone of the range, whichis like the trail that crosses over to the Two Medicine. I could notrecognize the right one when we came to it, and we should follow up oneafter another, and wear ourselves out. I remember some landmarks onlywhere the right trail leaves the lake and enters the heavy timber, andfrom that place we have to start. Also, we have to start from there onbare ground; for if we started on the snow, our trail would be seen andfollowed, and that would be the end for us."
"Well, then, let's go up and look at the summit of our pass," Iproposed. "It may not be so bad as you think. Perhaps we can find someway to cross the dangerous place."
He objected that we should waste our time, but I kept urging that wemust overlook no possible chance to escape to the plains, until finallyI persuaded him. One bright morning we put on our snowshoes and started.As the going was good on the deep, settled snow, we were not long incovering the distance to the Salt Springs. Up and down the mountainside,all round them, was a perfect network of goat trails in the snow, andhere and there were large and small groups of the strange, uncouthanimals, some lying down, some sitting and staring dejectedly off intospace, while still others were cropping lichens from wind-swept, rockywalls. Although several of them were less than three hundred yardsaway, they paid no attention to us.
After watching some that were feeding on the cliff wall, where theylooked as if they were pasted to it, we came to the conclusion that theycould travel where a bighorn would certainly fall and be dashed topieces. One old billy-goat was almost human in the way in which he gotover difficult places. After standing on his hind legs and gathering allthe lichen within reach he concluded to ascend to the next shelf. Sincethere was not room for him to back away for a leap, he placed hisforefeet over the edge, and drew himself up on to it--exactly as a mandraws himself up by the sheer muscular strength of his arms.
Not far beyond the springs, we left the last of the timber and began theascent of the summit proper, and soon came into the zone of terrificwinds; but fortunately for us, there was scarce a breath stirring thatday. The snow was so hard-packed by the wind that when we removed oursnowshoes, our moccasined feet left no impressions in it. The rockyslopes facing the northwest were absolutely bare, while those pitchingthe other way lay buried under drifts from five to fifty feet and morein depth.
Late in the afternoon we came to the west end of the pass, having madetwice as good time in the ascent as we had in the descent in the autumnwith horses. I needed but one glance at the place to be convinced thatit was impassable. The steep slide where my horse and I had so nearlybeen lost was buried deep in snow; towering above it were heavy,greenish, concave drifts of snow clinging to the knife-edge wall andlikely to topple over at any moment. Our weight might, and probablywould, start an avalanche rushing down the slide and off into abysmalspace. We stood in the trail of several goats, which had ventured out onthe slide for a few yards, abruptly turned and retraced their steps.
"Even they feared to cross," said Pitamakan. "Come on! Let's go home."
I was so disappointed that I had not a word to say on the way down. Wereached the lodge late in the night, made sure that no one had been nearit during our absence, and after bui
lding a good fire and eating someroast meat, crawled into our fur bag, nearly worn out. It had been along, hard day.
At this time our catch of fur began to decrease rapidly. It is my beliefthat the predatory as well as the herbivorous animals never stray veryfar from the place where they are born.
A case in point is that of an old grizzly bear, whose trail could not bemistaken because he had lost a toe from his left front foot. Every threeweeks he crossed the outlet of the Upper St. Mary's Lake, wandered upinto the Red Eagle Valley, swung round northward along the back-bone ofthe Rockies to the Swift Current Waters, and thence down across theoutlet again. Observation of other animals also leads me to believethat they all have their habitual rounds. If this is so, it explains whyit was that our deadfalls held fewer and fewer prizes for us, untilfinally three or four days would pass without our finding even a martento reward us for our long, weary tramps.
The days now grew noticeably longer and warmer, until finallysnow-shoeing was impossible after nine or ten o'clock in the morning.The warm sun turned the snow into large, loose, water-saturated grainswhich would give way every few steps and let us down clear to theground, often in places where the snow was so deep that we stood, so tospeak, in a greenish well from which we had to look straight up to seethe sky. It was very difficult to get out of such places.
Toward the end of our stay we did most of our tramping in the earlymorning, when the snow was covered with so hard a crust by the night'sfrost that it would hold us up without snowshoes.
One evening we heard the distant cry of wild geese. That was our signalfor departure. We made a last round of the deadfalls, sprung each onethat was set, and the next day made up two bundles of the peltries thatwe were to take with us. There were in all sixty-one marten, ten fisher,seventeen mink, five wolverene, one mountain-lion, eight lynx, and twootter skins. Fortunately, there was little weight in all that number,and we bound them so compactly that there was little bulk. A quantity ofmoose meat, cut into thin sheets and dried, made up the rest of ourpack. Nor did we forget the fire-drill and a small, hard piece of birchwood that had been seasoning by the fire all the winter for a drillbase.
The goatskin sleeping-bag was too heavy to take along; it would haveadded much to our comfort, of course, but there was now no night coldenough to be very disagreeable so long as we could have fire, and ofthat we were assured. However, Pitamakan did not intend that the bagshould be wasted; almost the last thing that he did was to make anoffering of it to the sun. Lashing the bundle in a tree, he prayed thatwe might survive all perils by the way, and soon reach the lodges of ourpeople.
At sundown we ate our last meal in the lodge and enjoyed for the lasttime its cheerful shelter. Somehow, as we sat by the fire, we did notfeel like talking. To go away and leave the little home to the elementsand the prowlers of the night was like parting forever from some nearand dear friend.
We waited several hours, until the frost hardened the snow; then puttingon the snowshoes and slinging the packs, we started away down thevalley. There was certainly a lump in my throat as I turned for a lastlook at the lodge, with the smoke of its fire curling up from it andbeckoning us back to rest and sleep.
Until midnight the stiffening crust occasionally broke and let us down;but after that time it became so hard that, taking off our snowshoesand slinging them to the packs, we made remarkable time down the valley.
After passing the pipestone falls, we entered country new to us, wherethe valley became much wider. Every mile or two a branch came into theriver, which we were obliged to ford, for the ice had gone out of thestreams. It was no fun to remove moccasins and leggings, wade throughthe icy water, and then put them on in the snow on the other side.
For several weeks avalanches had been thundering down the mountain-sidesall round us, and this night they seemed more frequent than ever. Onceone tore its way to the valley just behind us. Not an hour later,Pitamakan's pack-thong broke, and let his bundle down into the snow. Aswe stopped to retie it, there came the rumbling of an avalanche,apparently right over our heads.
I thought that it would strike the valley not far below us. "Come! Getup!" I cried. "Let's run back as fast as we can!"
"Not so! We must run the other way. Can't you hear? It is going tostrike either where we are, or close behind us," Pitamakan answered; andgrasping my arm, he tried to make me go forward with him.
"Can't you hear it there?" I shouted, taking hold of him in my turn andpulling the other way. "It is coming down right where we stand, or notfar below here!"
And thus we stood while the dreadful noise increased, until it seemed asif the world was being rent wide open. There was a confusion ofthunderous sound--the grinding of rocks and ice, the crashing andsnapping of great trees. The avalanche came nearer with terrific speed,until finally it filled all the region round with such a deafening noisethat it was impossible even to guess where it would sweep down into thevalley.
We ran a few steps upstream, then as many more back, and finally stoodtrembling, quite uncertain which way to fly. But only for a moment; justahead of us the great forest trees began to leap out and downward fromthe steep mountain-side, and then the mass of the avalanche burst intothe flat and piled up a hundred feet deep before us--a dirty ridge ofwrecked mountain-side that extended away across the valley to the river.There was a last rumble and cracking of branches as it settled, and thenall was still.
"You see that I was right," I said. "It did strike below us."
"Yes, you heard better than I did," my partner admitted, "but that isnot what saved us. I am sure that the gods caused the pack-thong tobreak and stop us; otherwise we should have been right in the path ofthe slide."
Re-slinging our packs, we climbed the rough mass of the slide, round andover big boulders, ice blocks, and tree trunks, through piles of brushand broken branches. At the apex of the heap Pitamakan reached down,pulled something from the earth-stained snow, and passed it to me. Itwas the head and neck of a mountain goat, crushed almost flat, theflesh of which was still warm.
THE AVALANCHE BURST INTO THE FLAT]
"You see what would have happened to us if my pack-thong had notbroken," he said grimly.
"It must be that many goats perish in this way," I remarked.
"Yes, and also many bighorn," he said. "I have heard the old hunters saythat the bears, when they first come out in the spring, get their livingfrom these slides. They travel from one to another, and paw round insearch of the dead animals buried in them."
At daylight we entered an open park where we could see back toward thesummit. There was no doubt that we had traveled a long way during thenight, for the mountain opposite our abandoned lodge looked twenty milesdistant. The valley here was fully a mile wide, and the mountainsbordering it were covered with pines clear to the summit. They were notmore than a thousand feet high, and the western rim of them seemed notmore than fifteen miles away. We believed that from where they endedthe distance could not be great to the lake of the Flatheads.
Down here the snow was only about four feet deep, less than half thedepth of it where we had wintered. The air became warm much earlier inthe morning than it did up there. Using the snowshoes now, as the crustwas getting weak, we kept going, although very tired. During the twohours that we were able to travel after sunrise, we passed great numbersof elk, and not a few moose, and when, finally, the snow grew spongy andobliged us to stop for the day, we were plainly within the deer range,for both white-tail and mule-deer were as plentiful as jack-rabbits arein certain parts of the plains.
We stopped for our much-needed rest on a bare sandbar of the river, andwith bow and drill started a little fire and roasted some dry meat. Thesun shone warm there, and after eating, we lay down on the sand andslept until almost night.
Starting on again as soon as the snow crusted, we traveled the rest ofthe night without any trouble, and soon after daybreak suddenly passedthe snow-line and stepped into green-sprouting grass. The summer birdshad come, and were singing all rou
nd us. A meadow-lark, on a bush closeby, was especially tuneful, and Pitamakan mocked it:
"_Kit-ah-kim ai-siks-is-to-ki!_" (Your sister is dark-complexioned!) hecried gleefully. "Oh, no, little yellow-breast, you make a mistake. Ihave no sister."
We were in the edge of a fine prairie dotted with groves of pine andcottonwood. The land sloped gently to the west. I thought that it couldnot be far in that direction to the big lake, but Pitamakan said that itwas way off to the southwest, perhaps two days' journey from where wewere. Suddenly he fell on his knees and began with feverish haste to digup a slender, green-leaved plant.
"It is camass!" he cried, holding it up and wiping the earth from thewhite, onion-shaped root. "Dig! Dig! See, there are plenty of them allround. Eat plenty of them. They are good."
So they were; crisp, starchy, and rather sweet. After our winter-longdiet of meat, they were exactly what our appetites craved and oursystems needed. We made a meal of them right there. For once hunger gotthe better of our caution. Laying down our pack and snowshoes, we dug uproot after root, all the time moving out into prairie farther andfarther from the edge of the timber.
"Come on! Let's get our packs and hide somewhere for the day," I saidfinally. "I am filled with these things to the neck."
"Oh, wait a little; I want a few more," my partner answered.
Just then a band of deer burst out of a cottonwood grove about fivehundred yards to the west of us, and as we sat staring and wonderingwhat had startled them, three Indians came riding like the wind roundone side of the grove, and four more appeared on the other side, inswift pursuit of the animals.
With the Indians in the Rockies Page 11
