The Great Sioux Trail Part 40

The feeling that he had been thrown back into a distant past grew upon Will. He was in the deep snow, armed only with bow and arrows, around him were the huge, frozen mountains, desolate and awful in their majesty, and before him, only a few yards away, was the great beast, the puffings and blowings of which filled his ears. He fingered the elkhorn bow and then recalled his steadiness and courage. A few steps farther and he caught a glimpse of a vast hairy back. Evidently the animal was lying down and it would give the hunters an advantage, as they could fire at least one arrow apiece before it rose to its feet.

Another long, sliding step on the snowshoes and he saw more clearly the beast, on its side in a great hollow it had made for itself in the snow.

But as he looked the huge bull lurched upward and charged toward the right, from which point Pehansan was coming. Evidently a shift of the wind had brought it the odor of the Crane, and it attacked at once with all the ferocity of a mad elephant.

Will had a clear view of a vast body, great humped shoulders, and sharp, crooked horns. But now that the danger had come his pulses ceased to leap and hand and heart were steady. The arrow sang from the bow and buried itself deep in the great bull's neck. Another and another followed until a full dozen were gone, every one sunk to the feather in the animal's body. Roka and Pehansan were firing at the same time, sending in arrows with powerful arms and at such close range that not one missed. They stood out all over his body and he streamed with blood.

But the bull did not fall. No arrow had yet touched a vital spot.

Bellowing with pain and rage, he whirled, and catching sight of Will, who was only a few yards away, charged. Pehansan and Roka uttered warning shouts, and the youth, who in his enthusiasm had gone too near, made a convulsive leap to one side. Had he been on hard ground and in his moccasins he might easily have escaped that maddened rush, but the long and delicate snowshoes caught in a bush, and he fell at full length on his side. Then it was the very completeness of his fall that saved him. The infuriated beast charged directly over him, trampling on the point of one snowshoe and breaking it, but missing the foot. Will was conscious of a huge black shape pa.s.sing above him and of blood dripping down on his body, but he was not hurt and he remembered to cling to his bow.

The raging bull, feeling that he had missed his prey, turned and was about to charge again. Will would not have been missed by him a second time. The youth would have been cut to pieces as he struggled for his balance, but Pehansan did a deed worthy of the bravest of the brave. Far more agile on the snowshoes than Will, he thrust himself in front of the animal, waved his bow and shouted to attract his attention. The bull, uttering a mighty bellow, charged, but the brave Crane half leaped, half glided aside, and his arrows thudded in the great rough neck as the beast rushed by.

When the monster turned again, Will, although he was compelled to lean against a bush for support, had drawn a fresh sheaf of arrows from the quiver, and he sent them home in a stream. Roka from another point was doing the same and Pehansan from a third place was discharging a volley.

The great beast, encircled by stinging death, threw up his head, uttered a tremendous bellow of agony and despair and crashed to the earth, where he breathed out his life.

Will, trembling from his exertions and limping from the broken snowshoe approached cautiously, still viewing that huge, hairy form with wonder and some apprehension. Nor were Roka and Pehansan free from the same nervous strain and awe.

"What is it?" asked Will, "a mammoth or a mastodon?"

"Don't know mammoth and don't know mastodon," replied Pehansan, shaking his head, "but do know it is the biggest of all animals my eyes have ever seen."

"It is a woods or mountain buffalo that has far outgrown its kind, just as there are giants among men," said Roka.

"If this were a man and he bore the same relation to his species he would be thirteen or fourteen feet tall," said Will, his voice still shaking a little. "Why, he'd make most elephants ashamed to be so puny and small."

"He, too, like the bears, came out of the far North," said Pehansan.

"Maybe there is not another in the world like him."

"That hide of his is thick with arrows," said Will, "but in so big a skin I don't think the arrow holes will amount to much. We ought to have it. We must carry so grand a trophy back to the village to-night."

Roka shook his head.

"Not to-night," he said. "We three be strong, but we cannot move the body of this mighty beast, and so we cannot take off the skin."

"I will go to the village and bring many people," said Pehansan.

Again the wise Roka shook his head.

"No," he said, "we three will stay by the bull. You are fast on your snowshoes, Pehansan, and you can shoot your arrows swift, hard and true, but you would never reach the village, which is many miles from here.

The fierce wild animals would devour you. We must clear the snow away as fast as we can and build fires all about us. The beasts have already scented the dead bull, and will come to eat him and us."

The shadows of the twilight were falling already, and they heard the faint howls of the meat-eaters on the slopes. Will and his comrades, taking off their snowshoes, worked with frantic energy, clearing away the snow with their mittened hands, bringing vast quant.i.ties of the dead wood, lighting several fires in a circle about the bull, and keeping themselves, with the surplus wood, inside the circle. Then, while Will fed the fires, Roka and Pehansan carefully cut the arrows out of the body.

"We may need them all before morning," said Roka.

"It is so, if the growling be a true sign," said Pehansan.

The two warriors partly skinned the body and cut off great chunks of meat, which they broiled over the fires, and all three ate. Meanwhile, Will, bow and arrows ready, watched the bushes beyond the circle of flame. If his situation had been nearly primitive in the day it was wholly primitive at night. The mighty bull buffalo was to him truly a mammoth, and beyond the circle of fire, which they dreaded most of all things, the fierce carnivora were waiting to devour the hunters and their giant prize alike. When a pair of green eyes came unusually near Will fired an arrow at a point midway between them, and a terrific howling and shrieking followed.

"It was one of the great wolves, I think," said Roka, "and your arrow sped true. The others are devouring him now. Listen, you can hear his big bones cracking!"

Will shuddered and threw more wood on the fires. What a blessed thing fire was! It saved them from the freezing night and it saved them from the teeth of the wild beasts, which he knew were gathering in a great circle, mad with hunger. The flames leaped higher, and he caught glimpses of dusky figures hovering among the bushes, wolves, bears and he knew not what, because imagination was very lively within him then and he had traveled back to a primordial time.

The night became very dark and the snow hardened again under the cold that came with it. Will, crouched by one of the fires with his bow and arrows ever ready in his hands, heard the sounds of heavy bodies, either sinking into the snow or crushing their way through it. The wind rose and cut like a knife. Despite his heavy buffalo robe overcoat he moved a little closer to the fire, and Pehansan and Roka almost unconsciously did the same. They were all sitting, and the great body of the slain bull towered above them. The sound of the wind, as it swept through the gorges, was ferocious like the growling of the beasts with which it mingled.

"The spirits of evil are abroad to-night," said Roka. "The air is full of them and they rush to destroy us, but Manitou has given us the fire with which to defend us."

A long yell like that of a cat, but many times louder, came from a point beyond and above them, where a tree of good size grew about fifty yards away. Roka seized a piece of burning wood and held it aloft.

"It's a monstrous mountain lion stretched along a bough," he said. "Look closely, Waditaka, and you will see. At a long distance you are the best bowman of us all. Can you not reach him with an arrow from your great elkhorn bow?"

"I think so," replied Will, concentrating his gaze until he could make out clearly the outlines of the giant cat. "He's a monster of his kind.

All the animals in this region seem to be about twice the size of ordinary types."

"But if the arrow touches the heart the big as well as the little will fall."

"True, Roka, and while you hold that torch aloft I can mark the spot on his yellowish hide beneath which his heart lies. Steady, now, don't let the light waver and I think I can reach the place."

He fitted the arrow to the string, bent the great bow and let fly. The arrow sang a moment through the air, and then it stood out, buried to the feathers in the body of the lion. The wounded beast uttered a scream so fierce that all three shuddered and drew a little closer together, and then launched itself through the air like a projectile. It struck in the snow somewhere, disappeared from their sight, and they heard terrible sounds of growling and fighting.

"Your arrow went straight to its heart," said Roka. "The spring was its last convulsion of the muscles and now the other beasts are fighting over its body as they eat it."

"I don't care how soon this night is over," said Will. "All the meat-eating wild beasts in the mountains must be gathering about us."

"It is not a time for sleep," said Roka gravely. "While Manitou has given us the fire to serve as a wall around us, he tells us also that we must watch every minute of the night with the bows and arrows always in our hands, or we die."

"Aye," said Pehansan, "there is one that comes too near now!"

He sent an arrow slithering at a bulky figure dimly outlined not more than ten yards away. At so short a distance a Sioux could shoot an arrow with tremendous force, and there followed at once a roar of pain, a rush of heavy feet, and a wild threshing among the bushes.

"I know not what beast it was," said Pehansan proudly, "but like the other it will soon find a grave in the stomachs of the great wolves."

They did not see any more figures for an hour or two, but a dreadful howling came from the great beasts, from every point in the complete circle about them. The three watched closely, eager to speed more arrows, but evidently the carnivora had taken temporary alarm and would not come too near lest the flying death reach them again. Roka cut fresh pieces from the buffalo and roasted them over one of the fires.

"Eat," he said to his comrades. "It is as wearing to watch and wait as it is to march and fight. Eat, even if you are not hungry, that your strength may be preserved."

Will, who at any other time would have found the meat of the bull too tough before pounding, ate, and he ate, too, with an appet.i.te, Roka and Pehansan joining with vigor.

The odor of the cooking steak penetrated the darkness about them and they heard the fierce growling of bears and the screaming of great cats.

Will was growing so much used to these terrible noises, he felt so much confidence in their ring of fire that he laughed, and his laugh had a light trace of mockery.

"Wouldn't they be glad to get at us?" he said, "and wouldn't they like to sink their teeth in the giant bull here? Why, there's enough of him to feed a whole gang of 'em!"

"But he'll feed our people down in the village," said Pehansan, who was also in good spirits. "Still the wild beasts are coming nearer. It is great luck that we have so much wood for the fires."

He and Will built the fires higher, while Roka sent two or three arrows at the green or yellow eyes in the dark. The roars or fierce yells showed that he had hit, and they heard the sound of heavy bodies being threshed about in the dusk.

"We are not eaten but some of our enemies are," said Will. "It would be a good plan, wouldn't it, to slay them whenever we can in order that they may be food for one another?"

"It is wisely spoken," said Roka. "We will shoot whenever we see a target, but we will never neglect the fires because they are more important even than the arrows."