Chapter XX
The Attack on the Hunters
AFTER A COUPLE of days camp was moved out to the Marias, in the bottom opposite the mouth of Black Coulée. Sarvis berries were very plentiful all along the river, and the women gathered large quantities of them to dry for winter use. Ashton had not yet fired a shot from his new rifle, so one afternoon I prevailed upon him to go for a hunt. I had some difficulty, however, in getting him out. He seemed to have no interest in anything, passing most of the time on his couch, smoking, smoking, and abstractedly refilling his pipe and smoking again. The women were right. Never-Laughs was sorely grieving about something. I wished that I could find a way to make him forget it, whatever the trouble was.
We climbed on our horses, crossed the river, and rode northward, near enough to the Black Coulée to look down into it occasionally. Game was not very plentiful, for the hunters had driven most of the herds back toward the Sweetgrass Hills. However, we saw some antelope here and there, and several small bands of buffalo, with occasionally a lone old bull. We rode out five or six miles, and then down into the coulée to water our horses at a pool we saw in the bottom. It was a shallow, narrow stretch of water, about fifty yards in length, and I was surprised to see that the willows bordering its eastern side had been cut in considerable quantity by beavers. On the western side, there was a clay slope of twenty or thirty feet, up to a high-cut bank, and in the base of this bank was a deep, dark, low cavern, in which the beavers lived. Judging by the various-sized footprints about, a whole family of them lived there. I never before, nor since, found these animals in such a place. There was no water between this pool and the river, some miles distant; the pool was not deep enough to wholly cover them. But most unusual of all was the fact that they lived in a cave, the entrance to which was some distance from and above the pool. There were three or four old lodge poles lying nearby, and I tried to ascertain the depth of the cave with one of them, but failed. I found, however, that the roof of it sloped down so near the floor, that nothing larger than a fox could get into the innermost recesses. A fox, even a red one, would go hungry, a long time before trying to make a meal of a beaver.
Before descending into the coulée we had seen a few head of buffalo feeding on the opposite side of it, and while we loitered at the pool they came in sight at the top of the slope, breaking into a trot, and finally on a 'lope hurrying down for water. "Now, then," I said to Ashton, "try your rifle; Shoot that young cow, the third from the leader."
The band turned, when about a hundred yards away, in order to come into the bottom of the coulée above the cut bank, and when this particular animal swung broadside to us, he threw his gun up and, without a noticeable pause to sight the arm, sent a bullet into the right place, just back of the shoulder. Blood streamed from its nostrils almost at the crack of the gun, and after loping on a short distance, it suddenly stopped and then sank to the ground. "That was a fine shot," I remarked. "You have evidently handled the rifle before."
"Yes," he said, "I used to shoot a good deal in the Adirondacks, and in Maine and Nova Scotia."
We led our horses over to the fallen buffalo, and I bled it, then set it up to cut out the boss ribs, Ashton standing by watching the way I did it. "I'll not kill another one," he said, more to himself than to me. "It doesn't seem right to take the life of such a magnificent animal."
"Well," I remarked, "there isn't a bit of fresh meat in the lodge. I don't know what the women would say were we to return without some.
"Oh! we must eat, of course," he agreed; "but I don't care to kill any more of these noble animals. Somehow I've lost all pleasure in hunting. Hereafter I'll loan some Indian my rifle, and he can furnish my share of the meat. That can be done, I presume?"
I told him that he could probably make sorne such arrangement. I didn't tell him, though, that I would see that he got out and rustled some himself. I wanted to wake him up; to get him out of the trance he was in. There is nothing so conducive to good mental health as plenty of fatiguing work or exercise.
When we returned home with the boss ribs and the tongue, and several other parts of the animal which I had surreptitiously cut out and hurriedly placed in the sack I especially carried for them, I took pains to relate what a fine shot my friend had made. The women praised him highly, all of which I translated, and the Crow Woman told him if she was not already his mother, so to speak, she would like to be his wife, for then she would be sure to have plenty of meat and skins. Ashton smiled, but made no answer.
We had a dish for supper that evening at which my friend looked askance, as I had done when I first saw it, arid then, after tasting it, he ate it all, and looked around for more, as I also had done. I had brought in the little sack, among other things, a few feet of a certain entrail which is always streaked or covered with soft, snowy-white fat. This Nät-ah'-ki washed thoroughly and then stuffed with finely chopped tenderloin, and stuffed it in such a manner that the inside of the entrail became the outside, and consequently the rich fat was encased with the meat. Both ends of the case were then securely tied, and the long sausage-like thing placed on the coals to roast, the cook constantly turning and moving it around to prevent it burning. After about twenty minutes on the coals, it was dropped into a pot of boiling water for five or ten minutes more, and was then ready to serve. In my estimation, and in that of all who have tried it, this method of cooking meat is the best of all, for the securely tied case confines all the juices of the meat. The Blackfeet call this Crow entrail, as they learned from that tribe how to prepare and cook the dish. It remains for some enterprising city cook to give it an English name, and open a place where it will be the main feature of the food. I'll guarantee that all the lovers of good things in the town will flock to him,
A day or two later, in pursuance of my plan to get Ashton out more frequently, I pretended to be ill, and then Nät-ah'-ki told him, I interpreting, that the meat was all gone, and unless he went out and killed something, we would go hungry to bed. He appealed to me to find a substitute for him, offering to furnish rifle and cartridges, and also pay the hunter, and Nät-ah'-ki was sent out to find someone. But I had posted her, and she presently returned with a very sad expression on her face, and reported that no one could be found to go; that all who could were already gone to hunt.
"Well, then," said our friend, "if that is the case, there's no need of my going out. I'll buy some meat of them when they return."
I thought that I had failed after all in my little plan, but Nat-ah'-ki came to the rescue, as soon as I told her what he had decided to do.
"Tell him," she said, "that I did not think he wished to bring shame upon this lodge. If he buys meat, the whole camp will laugh and jeer at me, and say, what a useless man she has got. He can't kill enough meat to supply his lodge. His friend has to buy it to keep all from starving."
Ashton jumped up at once when he heard that. "Where's my horse?" he asked. "If that is the way they look at it, why, I've got to hunt. Send for the horse."
I saw him off with Weasel Tail, whom I told to make a wide circle that would require the whole day. And a long day they certainly had, returning home after sunset. I had also instructed the Indian to lose his gun caps-where he could conveniently find them again. So Ashton had been obliged to do the shooting, and they brought in plenty of meat. He was very tired, and hungry and thirsty that evening, and instead of smoking innumerable times, he filled his pipe but once after eating, and then went to sleep. From that day on, for a time, he had to do all the hunting. I remained ill, or hurt my leg, or my horse was missing, so I couldn't go out. And it was truly wonderful the amount of meat we used. Nät-ah'-ki carried out quantities of it every day, and gave it to the needy ones of the camp, widows and others who had no one to bunt for them. But I did not remain in camp, because of this. As soon as Ashton and his hunting party, either Weasel Tail or some other friend, had departed, I would go berrying with the women, or Nät-ah'-ki and I would saddle up and have a ride somewhere in a direction opposite to that in which they were traveling. But for all his hard work, I could not see that Ashton became any more cheerful. The improvement was that he had less time to think, for he was generally sound asleep by eight or nine o'clock.
Twice the camp was moved, each time a few miles farther down the river. The berry season was about over, and the women began to talk of returning to Fort Benton, having gathered and dried all the fruit they needed. We had been out about six weeks, and I also was ready to return, as I was sure that Berry would be there awaiting us. We had a talk, a little council of our own one evening, and decided to move in the following day but one. Was it preordained that I should send Ashton out for a last hunt the morning before our departure? if I had not done so—but I did. You shall learn in time what was the result of it. He needn't have gone, we had plenty of meat. I sent him, and thereby changed the course of his whole life. Why, he might be living today had he remained in camp that morning. Looking back at it all, I don't know whether to blame myself or not.
Ashton and Weasel Tail rode away. The women began to pack up, getting out their parfleches and filling them with their store of berries and dried meats. It was about noon, and I had just signed to Nät-ah'-ki that I was hungry, when there suddenly appeared a number of riders tearing down the north slope of the valley, and the camp began to hum with excitement. One or two of the riders were waving their robes, making the sign for the "enemy." Men and boys grabbed lariats and started on the run for their horses. Down into the camp came the little bunch of riders, and a moment later Ashton rode up beside me. He had a young girl in front of him, whom he dropped into Nät-ah'-ki's outstretched arms. He was terribly excited, his dark eyes fairly shone, and he said over and over again, "The cowards! Oh, the cowards! But I killed two of them, yes, I got two."
The girl was crying, wailing: "My mother, my father," she kept repeating, "both dead, both killed."
There was a great commotion in camp; men were saddling horses, calling wildly for their weapons, mounting and riding away out on to the plain in an ever-increasing stream. Ashton dismounted, and I saw that his left trouser leg was soaked with blood. He limped into the lodge, and I followed and undressed him; there was a long, open bullet furrow just below the hip. "It was this way," he told me, while I washed and bandaged the wound, "Weasel Tail and I overtook a party of hunters three or four miles out, and traveled on with them. Some had their women along, to help skin and bring in what they killed, I suppose. In a little while we sighted a fine herd of buffalo, approached them, and had a good run, the party killing something like twenty of them. We were butchering the animals when something like fifty riders appeared from God knows where, and commenced shooting at us. We were only seven or eight men, not strong enough to stand them off, but we partly held them in check, while the women got their horses, and we all lit out for home—that is, all but three, two men and a woman, who had been killed at the first fire. I killed one of the enemy before I got on my horse, and another one a little later. And I'm glad I did; I just wish I could have killed them all.
"Well, they followed us quite a long ways, perhaps two miles, but we managed to stop them finally, or perhaps they thought they had better not venture too near to our camp. One of them creased me, didn't he? Well, he will not do any more shooting. I got him. He just tumbled off his horse on his head, and flopped over flat on the ground. The girl? They shot her horse, but before it fell I reached over and lifted her onto mine. After that I couldn't handle my rife, or I might have done better. I'll tell you what, old man, if 'twasn't for those poor scalped corpses lying out there on the plain, I would say that it was great sport."