Rising Wolf the White Blackfoot Part 10

"The lodge fires had all died out and the people were asleep when we arrived at the edge of the camp. We kept close to the foot of the cliff and approached the medicine man's lodge. The stallion was picketed between it and the cliff. Little Wolf signed to me to go to it and wait for him while he took the medicine, which we could see was still hanging on a tripod just back of the lodge. Again I signed him not to take it. I laid hold of his arm and tried to lead him with me toward the horse, but he signed that he _would_ have the medicine and I let him go, and went on toward the horse.

"I don't know why I changed my course and followed my friend; something urged me to do so. I was about twenty steps behind him as he went up to the tripod and started to lift the medicine sacks from it. As he did so I saw the lodge skin suddenly raised and the medicine man sprang out from under it and seized him from behind. I ran to them as they struggled and struck the big man on the head with my gun and down he went and lay still. He had never seen me, and never knew what hit him.

Neither had he made any outcry. As soon as he fell we ran to the stallion, bridled him with his picket rope and sprang upon his back, Little Wolf behind me, and still hanging to the medicine sacks. It was my intention to make the stallion carry us out from the camp as fast as he could go, but there was nowhere any outcry--any one in sight, so I let him go at a walk until we were some distance down the valley, and then hurried him the rest of the way to the meeting place. Our companions were all there with their takings, mounted and waiting for us. Little Wolf got down and caught a horse and away we went for the north, and it was a big band of horses that we drove ahead of us.

"At daybreak we stopped to change to fresh horses, and as I turned loose the stallion I signed to Little Wolf: 'There! Take your horse!'

"'I shall never put a rope on him! You saved my life; that enemy would have killed me but for you. The horse is yours,' he signed back, and went away off our trail and hung the medicine sacks in the brush where any pursuers we might have would never see them. He gave them to the sun.

"Well, when we got back to the mouth of the Bighorn we found that the Pi-kun-i had started for the Snow Mountains several days before, so after one night in the Crow camp we five took up their trail. I spent that last night in Little Wolf's lodge, and we planned to meet often again, and to go on more raids together. His last words, or signs, rather, to me were: 'Do not forget that no matter what others may do, you and I shall always be friends!'

"'Yes! Friends always,' I answered, and rode away. I have never seen him since that time."

So ended Ancient Otter's story. It heartened me. If his friend was still alive--and he certainly had not been killed in the big fight--he would be with us for making peace, as well as Mad Plume's sister. Said Mad Plume to me: "You now know why Ancient Otter is with us. He told the story to you; we knew it!"

The next morning broke very cold; the air was full of fine frost flakes; the snow was drifted and in places very deep. We unhobbled our horses, saddled them and struck off through the timber toward the mouth of the Bighorn soon after sunrise. An hour or so later we crossed the river on the ice, and turned up the valley of the Bighorn. Here I again said to myself that I was traversing country that people of my race had never seen, but I was mistaken. I learned years afterward that a Lewis and Clark man, named Cotter, had come west again in 1807, and had trapped on the headwaters of the Bighorn, and followed it down to its junction with the Yellowstone.

We saw great numbers of the different kinds of game that morning, and the sight that most impressed me was the trees full of grouse, or prairie chickens, as the whites call them. We pa.s.sed hundreds of cottonwoods in which the birds were almost as plentiful as apples in an apple tree. They sat motionless upon their perches, their feathers all fluffed out, and paid not the slightest attention to us as we pa.s.sed under them.

"They are cold and unhappy now, but in the next moon they will be dancing, and happy enough," Red Crow said to me. He saw that I thought he was joking, and went on: "Yes, dancing! They gather in a circle on the plain and the males dance and the females look on. Oh, they have just as good times dancing as we do."

He was right. Many a time since then I have stopped and watched the birds dance for a long time. It is a very interesting sight. After the long years I have pa.s.sed in the plains and mountains, studying the habits of all wild creatures, I become impatient when I hear people speak of them as dumb creatures. Dumb! Why, they have their racial languages as well as we! If they hadn't, do you think, for instance, that the grouse could have learned their peculiar dance? Or the beavers how to build their wonderful dams and houses?

The snow was so deep that we made no more than fifteen miles that day.

We hobbled the tired horses long before sunset, and put up another war lodge and made ourselves as comfortable as was possible. We had seen no signs of the Crows during the day.

It was the next afternoon that we sighted them, or rather, one rider turning down into the valley from the plain, and several miles ahead of us. We happened at the time to be in the upper end of a long grove, and, while we could see him plainly, we were sure that the trees screened us from him, bare though they were.

"The sun is almost down, he rides as if he were in no hurry; I think that the camp cannot be far away," said Ancient Otter.

"Ai! That is my thought," Mad Plume agreed, and led on, the rider having pa.s.sed from our sight around a bend in the valley. We crossed a strip of open bottom, entered another grove which circled clear around the bend, and presently, looking out from the upper end of it, saw the great camp.

It was pitched in a wide, open bottom about a mile from us and was in two sections, or circles, one, of course, that of the River Crows, the other the Mountain Crows. Looking out upon them, and the swarms of people pa.s.sing in all directions among the lodges, I shivered a bit. Not until that moment had I been even doubtful of the success of our mission. Now a great fear came over me. Many of those people I saw were mourning for the loss of some dear one in the attack upon us some months back. I doubted that they would ever give us time to state the reason of our coming; they would kill us as soon as they saw that we were the hated Pi-kun-i! And then, to add to my fear, Mad Plume turned to Ancient Otter and asked: "Brother, which one, think you, is the camp of the Mountain Crows?"

"I can't make out for sure, but I think it is the first one. We have to make sure of that. If we enter the camp of the River Crows we shall find no one there to help us; right there will be our end!"

"Your sister and Little Wolf are in the Mountain Crow camp?" I asked Mad Plume.

"Yes!" he answered, very shortly, and continued staring thoughtfully at the camps.

Said Ancient Otter: "Oh, if we could only be a little nearer to the lodges, I could tell. Little Wolf's lodge is on the west side of the camp circle, and right next it, the first one to the south, is a lodge painted with two wolves. The Crow wolf medicine."

"Yes, I remember that lodge. It is five lodges north of my sister's lodge," said Mad Plume.

"Well, one thing we can do! Unless we freeze to death!" Mad Plume went on. "We can stay right here until night, then sneak into camp and find my sister and your friend and get them to help us, to protect us until we are in the chief's lodge."

We all agreed that that was the only thing to do, and began our chilly wait. Red Crow pointed to the many bands of horses grazing between the camp and us, and on both slopes of the valley. "What a chance for us if we were raiders!" he exclaimed.

"Don't talk foolishness at this time!" Mad Plume told him. "It is best that you pray the G.o.ds for help in what we are about to undertake!" And with that he voiced a short, earnest prayer to the sun, to Old Man, and his own medicine animal--"thou little under water animal"--he called it, to preserve us from all the dangers that we were to face there in the enemy camp. And when he had finished I cried out even as the others did: "Ai! Spuhts-uh Mut-tup-i, kim-o-ket-an-nan!" (Yes! Above People, pity have for us!)

Hai! Hai! But it was cold! Our horses stood humped up and miserable, the sweat freezing on their hair.

"We have to hobble them and turn them loose to graze, else they will freeze to death," said Mad Plume.

"Yes, we may as well do that. If all goes well with us we shall find them safe enough hereabout, and if we never come back for them, why, they will live anyhow!" said Ancient Otter. So we turned them out, and set our saddles and ropes and pishimores in a little pile, and stamped about and swung our arms trying to keep warm.

Oh, how slowly, and yet how fast the sun went down that evening. But down it went at last, and as soon as the valley was really dark we started for the camp. As we neared it Mad Plume's last words were: "Remember this: You are to expect abuse and you are to stand it until you see that there is no hope for us. Then, _die fighting_!"

Cheering words, weren't they!

CHAPTER X

MAKING PEACE WITH THE CROWS

We approached the lower camp, the lodges all yellow glow from the cheerful fires within. And a cheerful camp it was; men and women singing here and there, several dances going on, children laughing and playing--and some squalling--men shouting out to their friends to come and smoke with them. We could see many dim figures hurrying through the cold and darkness from one lodge to another. We approached the west side of the circle at a swift walk, just as though we belonged there--knew where we were going; in that piercing cold to loiter, to hesitate, would be to proclaim that we were strangers in the camp. The circle was fifteen or twenty well separated lodges in width, so we had to go far into it in order to see the inside lodges. Ancient Otter led us, looking for the lodge of the painted wolves. We were well into the circle when a man came out of a lodge that we were just pa.s.sing, and my heart gave a big jump when the door curtain was thrust aside and he stepped out. He saw us, of course, but turned and went off the way we had come, and I breathed more freely. But we had not gone two lodges farther when we saw some one coming straight toward us. We had to keep on. We drew our robes yet more closely about our faces. It was an anxious moment. We were due to meet the person right in front of a well-lighted lodge, and were within a few steps of it when a number of men inside struck up a song.

When opposite our leader the person said something, and half stopped; but Ancient Otter pretended that he did not hear and kept right on, we following. Then, just as I was pa.s.sing the person, he did stop and stare at us! I dared not look back, and oh, how I wanted to! I expected every step I made to hear a shout of alarm that would arouse the camp. But no!

We went peacefully on, and presently Ancient Otter led us out of the circle, and away out from the lodges, and when at a safe distance stopped and told us that we had been in the wrong camp; the camp of the River Crows.

"Never mind! We have had two escapes! The G.o.ds are with us! Lead on!"

Mad Plume told him.

"Yes, I go! Follow, brothers, and pray! Pray for help!" he exclaimed.

We made a wide circle around to the other camp to avoid any persons who might be going from one to the other of the two, and presently struck it on the west side of the circle. No one was in sight so we went straight in among the lodges and soon saw the one of the wolf medicine, the light of the fire within revealing plainly the big wolf painting on the right of the doorway. It had the appearance of great ferocity, the wide mouth showing long, sharp fangs. Ancient Otter stopped and pointed to the lodge and said to us in a low tone: "There it is, the wolf medicine lodge, and that one just to the north of it is my friend's lodge. Come!

We will go in!"

"No! It is best that we go to my sister's lodge first. We will need some one to interpret for us at once, and I am sure that by this time she speaks Crow," said Mad Plume.

Now, this should all have been arranged beforehand, for while we stood there talking a man suddenly came around a lodge behind us and called out to us something or other in his language. We pretended not to hear him.

"You haven't time to get to your sister's lodge! Follow me!" said Ancient Otter, and we started on at a swift walk. But the Crow came faster; something in our appearance, and our silence when he addressed us had aroused his suspicions. As Ancient Otter raised the door curtain of the lodge and the light streamed out full in his face, the man recognized him as one of the hated Pi-kun-i and shouted--as I afterwards learned--that the enemy were in the camp, and as we hurried into the lodge we heard on all sides of it the answering, rallying cry of the warriors.

When Ancient Otter stepped into the lodge and the Crow, Little Wolf, saw who it was, he sprang up and embraced and kissed him, then did the same to us and motioned us to seats. We took them, but it was hard to do so with the rallying cries of the warriors and screams of frightened women and children ringing in our ears. As soon as we were seated Little Wolf signed his friend: "You have come! I am glad!"

"I am glad to see you! We are sent by our chiefs to propose peace to your chiefs. Help us! First, send for the woman of the Pi-kun-i, sister of the chief there, Mad Plume."

"Yes!" Little Wolf signed, and spoke to one of his women, and she hurried out. He spoke to another, and as she went out he signed to us, "I am sending that one for our chiefs! Now, sit you here! I go to stand outside and keep the crazy warriors back." And with that he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his bow case, drew out the bow and a handful of arrows, and ran outside, thrusting back a man entering as he reached the doorway. He went none too soon; a great crowd was gathering about the lodge, shouting angrily, crying for our scalps, no doubt. We held our weapons ready and kept our eyes on the lodge skin, expecting every moment that the warriors would raise it and pour in upon us. I tell you, that was an anxious time. I must have shown that I was terribly frightened, for Mad Plume gave my shoulder a pat and said to me: "Take courage, younger brother, take courage!"

Just then the door curtain was thrust aside and a handsome young woman rushed in, and Mad Plume sprang up and embraced her. She clung to him, crying: "Oh, my brother! What a risk for you to come here at this time!

Oh, I hope that all will be well with us! My man is out there with Little Wolf, holding back the warriors! Oh, why don't the chiefs come!

Oh, they have come! Listen!"

The noise outside had suddenly died down; some one was addressing the crowd in a deep and powerful voice, and in a minute or two she said to us: "It is the head chief, Spotted Bull. He commands his head warriors to see that you are not harmed, and tells the others to all go home!"

And then, a little later: "They are going; they are minding him! Oh, I am glad! For the present you are safe!"