The Prairie Schooner Part 7

"Five moons ago, while at White River, where the Great Father has begun to issue rations of beef on the foot to every head of a Sioux tepee. I gave the Mountain Fox seventeen beaver pelts, a bale of buckskins, twelve obsidian arrow points, one lame calico pony, a pipestone peace-pipe, some kinnickinnic and an iron oven, found after the soldiers left a camp at Clear Creek, and eleven bone b.u.t.tons for the hand of his second oldest daughter. This was all of my fortune, except one saddle pony, a pack pony, one lodge-pole tepee and poles, four buffalo robes, a coil of telegraph wire [stolen from the Overland], several hair-braided halters, a lariat and my private store of scalps, none of which I took myself, but which had been inherited from my father, a sub-chief known as the Hawk, a brave man whose bones are now dry in an elevated grave near the fast-running creek known to the whites as Ten, but which in Sioux is Wickachimminy. This, with my bows and arrows and a Spencer rifle, for which I had no ammunition, with my moccasins, a breech-clout and jerked meat to last one moon, was all I had--not much, but enough--and I was happy with my bride.

"After the sun had risen and set three times Mountain Fox came to my tepee and said I must give him still another horse, two blankets (which I did not have and could not get), and which he said I had promised.

"In our Sioux nation we never kill--that is, we do not kill Sioux. No Sioux has yet killed a Sioux, and few Sioux have ever called another of our tribe a liar. I called him a liar. He made a sign of anger and a loud noise of distress. My bride, on his command, left the tepee with him, telling me that under Sioux law, which I knew to be right, that the contract had not been filled until one moon had elapsed and all members of both families had smoked in celebration. What did I do? I rode away in the night toward the tracks where the Iron Horse runs, twenty days away, going and coming, to get from a white man's corral a horse and perhaps the blankets. This was while the gra.s.s was still green.

"I found the horse and the blankets and a gun; also food in cans. But I found in a large bottle what I had heard of, but never tasted before.

After the first sun had set I stopped at Dry Canyon, which is never dry, but full of roaring water, and there I drank nearly all from the bottle.

What I did then I only remember as a dream, but I saw in my dream my bride and I wept. My pony and the horse I found in the white man's corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, with the blankets and the food in cans, and I--Big Jaw--waded Dry Canyon Creek, which I say was wet, for nearly a day and left no trail. I drank more of the white man's poison and then camped without a fire.

"When the next sun came up I was ill and drank lots of water. Then came six men from the corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, and they bound my hands with small chains, tied me to my pony and took me back to the trail of the Iron Horse, where I was kept in a log house with iron windows until one night it burned, and I was taken out by the white man in charge, who, three moons ago, blindfolded me, put me on a horse and took me to another corral on the trail of the Iron Horse and locked me in a large tepee made of stone, where they fed me well and gave me medicine.

"Then I was, one moon ago, put to work in a forest to chop trees, and I ran away.

"Have you seen my bride--she of the hair as black as a starless night and teeth as white as the wing of a dove?

"Oh, white man, tell me, have you seen her? I am a lost sheep--the trail is covered to my eyes, with which I have wept almost constantly all the moons I have been away. Have you seen her I seek? I am hungry, not in my stomach, but in my breast and in my head; I must feast or die!"

Then he wept like a child.

"Crazy," said Rawhide Robinson.

"As a loon," added Parker, the night herder.

"Give him a pull at the Parson's bottle in the medicine chest,"

suggested the Kid, as he gave the fire a stir under a pot of bean soup.

"No," said the Parson, as he rode up on a mule and was told the story--"no liquor, boys. Feed him up and well let him trail back with us to Cheyenne and to the asylum. Poor cuss, he loved the squaw and he's clean daffy, but hasn't a bit of Injun left in him."

And so the Lost Indian, with a broken heart, brain tortured, went back to the asylum--a child of the plains who bought his wife, but loved her for all that. For the Sioux, while selling their daughters, never sold them unless there was real evidence of true love.

And while Big Jaw stole to make good his bargain, wasn't his deed an act of old-time knighthood after all?

Moreover, his undoing was not so much because of his own delinquency as it was that of the white man's invention--whisky--that brought about his downfall.

A thief, yes; a red-skinned, uncivilized wild man of the plains and the mountains. But can we cla.s.sify him with the civilized white man who commits a crime?

If the Lost Indian did not recover and win his bride in civilization's regulation way, perhaps it is just as well; and let us hope he is an angel in the Happy Hunting Ground.

CHAPTER XII

A SHE-BEAR AND HER CUB.

Before my feet were thoroughly toughened--that is to say, when I was still to some extent a tenderfoot--I joined, single-handed, in an undertaking which had more chances for failure than almost anything that can be imagined. It wasn't a trip to the moon, neither was it an attempt to wipe out the then powerful Sioux nation, but it was worse than either of these.

On Wagon-hound creek, one summer day, when our outfit was in camp for several hours, I strolled away from camp alone. It was early summer, probably July, and everything was green and fresh. Three miles from camp I came upon signs of life--the limb of a wild plum tree broken and hanging to the ground. The first impression was that there were prowling Indians in the neighborhood. The gra.s.s had also been trampled. The plums were only half ripe, and after gathering a few, I dropped over an embankment into the creek bottom, where I saw a large track in the soft silt; it was almost the shape of a human hand. There was a smaller one of the same character. These I followed, clutching a small "pop-gun" of the Derringer variety. After turning several curves of the creek I suddenly came upon my quarry--a big she-bear and a cub. The former snorted and made for me, and, sensibly pocketing my revolver, I lifted myself out of the creek bottom by grasping a convenient overhanging root of a tree; but almost simultaneously the she-bear was beside me.

Then began as pretty a race as you ever witnessed. It is a pity none saw it.

Fortunately I had only a few nights before been a silent listener to several camp-fire yarns of old-timers, one of which contained some advice about a man who finds himself in the predicament I now was in.

Before me was a bald hill rising perhaps 200 or 300 feet, covered with sage and other brush. Up I flew. My feet were like wings. But Mrs. Bear, though heavy, was able to keep within ten feet of my heels until I reached the top. Then as I almost felt her warm breath I wheeled and ran down hill. This was tactics I had heard at the camp-fire and it saved me, too, for Mrs. Bear, being set up heavier behind than in front, and having long hind legs and short front ones, was obliged to come down slowly and sidewise at that.

Her cub had stayed at the bottom of the hill, whining, and as I reached him I gave him a kick in the jaw and there was some more zig-zagging, fast running and heart palpitation, although I felt somewhat relieved when, looking over my shoulder, I saw Mother Bear licking her cub's face.

Later on I sneaked into camp and tried to keep my secret; but I looked and acted queerly, and finally told the story. In ten minutes five of us were on the way to the site of my encounter, all mounted.

We soon discovered Mrs. Bear and her cub, and the boss insisted that I should have the first shot at her with a Winchester. I took good aim and fired, but saw the dirt fly a rod behind the old lady. It was a bad miss. Then "Sailor Jack" Walton sent a bullet into her heart and the rest of us lariated and captured the baby, which we took to Fort Laramie and gave to an army officer's wife.

CHAPTER XIII

A KICK FROM A PLAYFUL BULLOCK--AND A JOKE.

Near Horse Creek lived a ranchman of the name of McDonald, a pioneer, and I believe a religious and perfectly sane and honest Scotchman, although I am not sure of his nativity; however, he had all the good qualities of that race. One June morning I joined a bull outfit owned by him and drove a team attached to the naked gears of two wagons into the virgin parks on Laramie Peak, along the streams and upon the sidehills of which grew the straightest aspen and small pine trees in all the territory. No ax had ever desecrated this beautiful forest. The trip was for the purpose of cutting some of these poles and building, while on the mountain, two dozen hay racks upon which was to be hauled to an army post the contract hay cut in the wild meadows. I was still something of a tenderfoot, for I knew nothing of this kind of work, and I soon discovered that I was regarded--much to my chagrin--as only a half-hand.

I complained to other drivers when McDonald indicated that he thought me a burden because I had to learn how to use an adz and because I had mishandled my team on a winding new trail we broke in the hills.

One of the bulls, just before leaving the plain below, had playfully reached me with one of his heavy but unshod hind hoofs and keeled me over into a bed of p.r.i.c.kly pears. For hours a kindly bullwhacker helped me pluck the sharp and brittle brads from my back. McDonald took a dislike to me, and naturally I lost any admiration I might have had for him. And here is where I made a fatal mistake. I shouldn't have noticed it; instead I took every opportunity offered to annoy him. One day, while in camp, at the instigation of an older man, I remarked that we were to have a change for supper.

"And what will it be?" queried McDonald.

"Bacon and coffee," I replied.

"But we had that for breakfast," said he.

"I know," said I, "but it was coffee and bacon--now it's bacon and coffee!"

The fact is there was no game in the hills, at least we got none. I knew McDonald wouldn't like the joke, but I never believed it would be taken as a personal affront. He was, as a matter of fact, a bountiful provider, but expected to find plenty of grouse, venison, etc., on the trip and had therefore provided only flour, bacon and coffee.

I met McDonald fifteen years later in the Middle West on a railroad train. He remembered me and hadn't forgotten the wound I inflicted by my alleged wit, for he said:

"Yes, I remember you, and you were a poor stick!"

I sincerely hope the last twenty-five and more years has softened his heart--if he lives--as it has softened mine, for I have only kindly thoughts of him, and even hold no grudge against the bull that reduced my efficiency by the playful caress he gave me with his hoof.

If you have ever tried to hoof it up a wild mountain stream running through towering cliffs of shale, without a trail, you can well imagine the task a bull-train outfit would have in working its way through the same maze of trees, rocks and rushing waters, winding from bluff to bluff. But these tasks were common undertakings for the men engaged in the business of freighting. "Corduroy" bridges consisting of gravel and poles had to be built, trees chopped down, fallen and dead trees removed, brush cleared away or used at the fording places.

A pioneer trip of this kind, and a fair example, was one which took our outfit from Cheyenne to the headwaters of the Cache de la Poudre river in what was known as the North Park, some years before Centennial Peak, one of Colorado's princ.i.p.al mountains, was of enough consequence to be christened by the government.

Cheyenne was pa.s.sing from the camp to the substantial town stage and lumber was needed for building purposes. The North and Middle Park regions were virgin forests, untouched by the woodman's ax, and the earth and its precious store of gold hardly scratched by prospectors.

There were no mines, no ranchmen, nothing but nature undisturbed; lakes of sweet, cold water, groves of white pines and other trees, wild and untenanted except by blacktail deer, bear, cougar and other animals. The Greeley colony, however, had been established many miles to the east in the valley of the Poudre. This was the first great American irrigating project and a few settlers had begun to till the soil.