CHAPTER XXIV. A MYSTERY OF THE PRAIRIE.
Two or three days after Fox Eye's accident, the camp moved again, back to the little creek near the Sweet Grass Hills, which they had left only a few days before. Here there were but few buffalo, and another move was made, still further south, to a stream running into the Marias River. After two or three short moves down this creek, buffalo were again found plenty, and several successful chases were made. As the indications seemed to be that the buffalo were more plenty east of the Marias, the camp turned in that direction and moved on toward the Missouri River.
By this time, great stores of food had been accumulated by the Indians. In every lodge were piled up parfleches of choice dried meat and back fat and tongues. Many sacks of pemmican had been made, and Jack greatly enjoyed seeing the old women at work, preparing this food. Every evening there was feasting in the camp. Men invited their friends to eat with them. Young people held dances, sometimes some of the societies held their dances. Everybody was good natured, laughing, happy.
Hugh and Jack were often invited to feast by some of Hugh's friends, and always accepted; and usually their hosts, perhaps on the suggestion of Hugh, or perhaps of Pis'kun Monroe, invited Joe to these feasts, as company for Jack. So it was that Joe, who under ordinary circumstances would have been treated only as a boy who had never done anything, and was as yet of no importance, came, through Jack's friendship, to be regarded as a young man of promise, and to stand in the public estimation, very high among the young men of the camp. Joe understood perfectly, why it was that he received this consideration, and sometimes used to talk to Jack about it, and to tell him that if it had not been for Hugh and himself, none of these honours, that he was now receiving, would have come to him.
Hugh, Jack and Joe took part in all the buffalo chases that were made, and on one of these, Jack rode his new horse and carried only his bow and arrows and his knife. On this chase he killed four cows which were afterwards identified by the private mark which his arrows bore, as did those of every other man in the camp. In this chase he let Joe ride Pawnee, and Joe killed six cows, for of course he was much more accustomed to the use of the bow, than was Jack. Often during these days, Jack and Joe rode out together, both bareback, and carrying their bows and several times coming upon single buffalo, they succeeded in killing them and bringing them into the camp. Several times, too, they came upon little herds of buffalo feeding or lying on the prairie, in places where it was possible to creep up very close to them, and Jack, who by this time had killed enough buffalo so that the novelty had worn off, persuaded Joe to creep up near the great beasts, and to lie there and watch them.
This was an amusement in which at first Joe scarcely sympathized. To him a buffalo was only so much food, and yet after they had done this once or twice, and had spent hours watching old cows lying there, chewing their cud while the yellow calves played about them, or at other times, slowly feeding along some little sag between two hills, or again, steadily travelling along with ponderous tread and swinging heads and beards sweeping the ground, Joe became as much interested in the study of the ways of these great beasts as was his white companion. Often mingled with a little group of buffalo would be a herd of antelope, feeding perfectly at home with their huge companions, and perhaps, if these started to walk in any direction, keeping along with them as if a part of the herd. Once a group of buffalo and antelope passed so close to the boys, lying on the hilltop, that Jack distinctly saw the nostrils of the nearest antelope move and twitch as it walked by, while the great bull near which it was, looked to the boy almost like a mountain.
One day, when the camp was near the Missouri River, Jack and Joe had ridden out, Jack carrying his rifle and Joe his bow, over to where the Bad Lands break away above the river. Far below them they could see the stream winding about among the yellow verdureless bluffs, which were gashed in all directions with ravines and canyons, and showed a curious mingling of colours of red and gray and green and brown and yellow. Near where they sat on their horses, a long point of level prairie stretched out toward the stream, and Jack proposed that they leave their horses in the hollow near where they were, and should walk out to the edge of the prairie and look over. He wanted to get as nearly above the stream as he could. He did not realise that several miles of broken Bad Lands lay between the point of prairie and the river.
They walked out to the point and stood there looking down. The strange scene had a fascination for Jack, who had never seen Bad Lands on so great a scale as this. As he sat there looking at the scene and wondering, Joe rose to his feet and walking a few yards southwards, looked over the bluff there, and then turning, called in a low voice to Jack. When he came up and followed Joe's glance, he saw down below them on the bluff, a single buffalo slowly working its way up the steep hillside, evidently coming from the river below. The height of the bluff was great, and the buffalo seemed to find it a hard climb. He would stick his toes into the soil and scramble half a dozen yards and then stop to rest. Then he would ascend a few yards more and again stop.
The boys lay on the edge of the bank and watched the bull slowly clamber toward them, and at length it reached the prairie only a few yards from where they were, and stopping with a grunt, stood there panting. They lay perfectly still and watched it, both feeling a little nervous as to which way the bull might turn. Joe whispered to Jack, "Look out, my friend, do not move, lie perfectly still. If he sees us he may rush upon us and kill us." For several moments they lay there and watched, and at last the buffalo slowly moved away and disappeared over a low hill. Then they sat up, and Jack said to Joe, "Well, I'm mighty glad he's gone, I tell you, he looked to me big and terrible. Of course, I suppose I might have killed him if he had turned toward us, but I was mighty glad when I saw him go the other way. Weren't you, Joe?"
"You bet I was," said Joe. "I was scared. Of course if he had come toward us you might have killed him, but I couldn't have done anything with my arrows; if he had come straight at us I'd have had to jump right over the side of the bluff."
"Yes," said Jack, "I expect that's all we could have done. I guess we could have dodged him there, but I'm glad we didn't have to try it."
The boys rose to their feet and went to the place where the buffalo had come up on the prairie, and looking down over the almost vertical cliff, they wondered how such a great and heavy beast could ever have climbed up.
"I tell you," said Jack, "they must be strong. Just think of that big animal climbing up the steep face of that bluff. I should have thought he'd have fallen over backward and rolled down every time he tried to take a step. It's wonderful."
"Oh!" said Joe, "I tell you a buffalo is a great, powerful beast. He's strong and he never gets tired, and he's big, and then besides all that he has got mysterious power. Maybe you don't believe that, but all the old men will tell you it's so."
"Well," said Jack, "I've heard something about that from Hugh, but of course I don't know anything except what I've been told; but Hugh says that all the Indians believe the buffalo has this power."
"Well," said Joe, "it's so; he has."
They set out to return to their horses, walking along over the prairie near where it broke off into the deep ravines running toward the river. As they were crossing one of the little side gullies that ran into one of these, Jack's eye was caught by an odd sparkle in the sand on the floor of the ravine, and looking a second time, he saw something that did not shine quite like a bit of gravel. He stepped toward it and saw sticking out of the sand in the wash, a bit of yellow metal, and stooping down, pulled from the soil what he took at first to be a used cartridge shell. In a moment he saw that it was not this, and calling Joe to him, said, "What can this be, Joe? I thought it was an old cartridge shell, but it isn't, it looks like a little brass whistle with the mouth part gone. You see this hole through the metal at the bottom, there has been a string through that to hold it by." Joe looked at the piece of metal which was a short tube closed at one end, and with a projection at that end, which, as Jack said, had a hole in it and had evidently served to tie the tube to something. "Why," said he, "that's a powder charger. I never saw one made of brass before, but I've seen lots made of horn and tin and copper. You fill this charger with powder from your horn, and empty it into your gun; that's the way you measure the charge."
"Oh yes," said Jack, "I've heard of that, but I never saw one before, but look here," he added, "here is something scratched on it. What is it?" And he rubbed the dust away with his finger and polished the metal on his sleeve. "Why! it's 'B. L.,' those must be the initials of the man who owned it; but I wonder how it came to be here. I suppose the man was hunting or travelling about, and the string broke and he lost it, and then finally it got washed into the gulch here."
"Yes," said Joe, "most likely that was it."
Jack put the charger in his pocket, and they went on; but hardly had they come out of the gully, when Joe stopped, and stooping down took hold of something at his feet. "Hold on, Jack," he said, "here is something more," and turning, Jack saw Joe stooping over an old piece of leather lying on the prairie. Joe took hold of the leather to lift it, but when he pulled at it, it slipped through his fingers. "Why, it's stuck fast," he said; and taking a hold of it again, he held it tighter and pulled, and the leather began to tear, and as it tore, some particles that looked like yellow gravel, escaped from the rent, and slipped down on the prairie.
"That's queer," said Jack, and both boys went down on their knees beside it. Jack picked up some of the grains that had escaped, and looked at them. They were very heavy and looked like dull brass. Poking his fingers through the rent in the leather, Joe felt about and poked out a lot more of the gravel, while Jack kept gathering it up in his hand and looking at it. Suddenly Jack's jaw dropped, and he looked at Joe with wide open eyes, while a frightened expression came on his face. "Joe," he said in a whisper, "do you know, I believe this is gold."
"You're crazy;" said Joe. "You must be very crazy. Who would leave gold lying out here on the prairie? I never heard of anything like that."
"But, Joe," said Jack, "feel how heavy it is, it must be gold. Nobody would carry brass around in a buckskin package and leave it here on the prairie any more than they would gold. Somebody must have been travelling here and lost this off his horse. This must be worth a lot of money. Now let's gather it up carefully and take it into camp and show it to Hugh, and see what he says. He'll know, dead sure."
The boys did not know how to get this on their horses without losing any of it. Evidently this old buckskin sack had lain there so long, that it was rotten and would not hold together. With their knives they dug carefully about the sack and as they dug, they found that it was in part buried in the soil, so that there was more of it below the surface of the prairie than above. Jack took off his hat and placed in it all the grains that they could gather up, and then digging deeply around the sack, they at length got below it.
"Now, Joe," said Jack, "there's only one thing to do that I can think of, to carry this stuff in the camp. We've got to have something that's strong and something that has no holes in it, so that none of the dust can get out; and the only thing of that kind that we have with us, is one of your leggings. Take off your leggings and we'll tie up the end of one of them and slip this bag and the dirt into the other end, and then tie that up and we can put it across a horse."
They did this, but it was not easy to do. In the first place the lump of dirt which held the sack was large, heavy and very frail, so that when they tried to lift it, it looked as if it would break in two. Instead of lifting it, therefore, they put the legging down on the ground, and while they lifted the lump of earth little by little, they slipped the side of the legging under it, until the whole mass was within the buckskin covering. Then they tied each end of the legging firmly with buckskin strings, and started to put it on the horse. It was very heavy. Joe said it weighed as much as half a sack of flour, that is, fifty pounds.
Both boys were in a high state of excitement and talked to each other in whispers, and kept looking guiltily over their shoulders in all directions, as if they were committing some crime. No doubt their notion was, that some one else might appear on the scene and lay claim to a portion of this treasure that they had found. Presently they mounted and set out for the camp, Jack keeping one hand behind him on the precious bundle that was tied behind his saddle, while Joe rode with his horse's head at Jack's knee, and kept his eyes fixed on the load.
"How much do you suppose there is, Joe?" said Jack.
"Why, I don't know," said Joe; "must be a hundred dollars worth of it, if it's gold."
"A hundred dollars! Pooh, Joe, you don't know anything," was the reply. "You said it weighed fifty pounds, and if it weighs as much as that, there must be thousands of dollars worth."
"My!" said Joe, "is there as much as that? I know what I'll do."
"What?" said Jack.
"I'll get me a good gun," replied Joe, "that's all I want, a good gun, and maybe a good buffalo horse."
"Why," said Jack, "if that's gold you can buy yourself all the guns and all the horses you want, and a lodge for yourself and still have plenty left."
"What'll you do, Jack, with yours?" said Joe.
"Oh, I don't know," said Jack, "I'd like to buy a lot of nice furs and robes to take home, but I expect we've got trade stuff enough to buy those things with, maybe I'll just take it home as it is. But hold on," he said, as a sudden thought struck him. "This doesn't belong to me; this is yours, you found it."
"No I didn't," said Joe, "we both found it together, and anyhow if you hadn't been along, I'd have just left it there; I wouldn't have carried a lot of yellow sand into the camp. I never saw anything like this before, and I'd a-thought it was just some kind of queer gravel. We have been partners right along, almost since you came into the camp, and we've got to be partners now."
"Well," said Jack, "we'll see what Hugh says about it. After all maybe it isn't anything. I've heard my uncle talk about fool's gold, and one day when we were coming up, I picked up apiece of yellow heavy stuff like this and asked Hugh what it was, and he told me some queer name that I can't remember, and then said some folks called it fool's gold, and he cracked it on the axe and it broke into little pieces. It looked something like this stuff we've got only the edges were sharp and not round like this, and it was bright and shiny too, and not dull, the way this is."
"Oh, I hope that this is gold, it will be great."
When they reached camp, they unsaddled and carefully carried their bundle into Pis'kun's lodge. Hugh was not there, but the boys were too impatient to wait for him long, and after a few moments, Jack left Joe on guard over the bundle, while he started out through the camp to find Hugh. Soon he came upon him, sitting in the shade of the lodges, smoking and talking with Last Bull and another old man, and going up to him with an air of much mystery, he asked him if he wouldn't come to the lodge. Hugh rose and accompanied him, looking at him meanwhile, with an expression of amused curiosity, for the boy was evidently big with some secret which he was anxious to reveal.
When they were seated in the lodge, the boys began to untie their bundle, and while doing so, told Hugh the story of their find. As they talked, his interest increased, and before the contents of the legging had been turned out into the pan borrowed from Pis'kun's wife, he was as much excited as the boys themselves. The legging was lifted up and slowly the mass of dirt mingled with yellow grains slipped out into the pan, and the moment that Hugh saw it he said, "By the Lord, boys, you've surely struck it." He took up one of the larger grains, bit it, tried it with his knife and then whispered impressively, "It's gold." For an hour or two all three were busy cleaning the grass, the soil and bits of rotten buckskin from among the yellow grains, which half filled the pan. When this was done, Hugh lifted it from the ground, and after weighing it carefully in his hand, said, "Boys, there must be twenty-five pounds of this dust. I wouldn't be surprised if there was five or six thousand dollars right here in that pan."
"My," said Jack, "that's an awful lot of money."
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's a lot of money. But how did it get there? That's what I want to know. We will have to go there to-morrow and look the ground over right carefully; somebody must have dropped that sack there, right on the prairie. Didn't you see nothing else there?"
"No," said Jack, "nothing; it was just lying there half covered up by the dirt and the grass, and Joe walked right over it before he saw it."
"Hold on, Jack," said Joe, "show White Bull that powder charger."
"That's so," said Jack, and he fished the tube out of his pocket.
Hugh looked at it carefully from all sides and pondered. After he had thought a little while, he said, "Look here boys, this is queer. I have seen that powder charger before, and I know the man that made it. 'B. L.,' that's Baptiste Lajeunesse, he was one of the old time trappers and I was in Benton when he made that charger. That's gold too. It was more than thirty years ago. Bat had just come in from the mountains with a big lot of furs, and sold them and got his money, and had started out to have a good time. Just before he got into the Post though, he had lost his charger. It was one, made him long before, out of a piece of mountain sheep's horn, by a great friend, and he thought the world of it. He kept talking all the time about that charger, and when he began to spend his money and to drink, he talked about it more and more. Now, Bat was a pretty handy man with tools, and when he was a boy, he had been blacksmith at the Hudson Bay Co., and that afternoon, when he was pretty drunk, as he was going along the street, he suddenly stopped and ran into the blacksmith shop and took a hammer and fished a twenty dollar gold piece out of his pocket, and began to hammer it out on the anvil, and before any of us knew what he was after, he had made himself this charger and scratched his initials on it, and tied it with a string to his shirt in front, where he used to carry his old charger when he was in town. A few days after that, after Bat had spent all his money, he started off again into the mountains, and I have never seen him from that day to this.
"Now it would be mighty curious," the old man went on, "if there was any connection between that charger and this sack of dust. I don't see how there could be, and I don't see how we are likely to find out anything about it; but anyhow, we'll go back there to-morrow and see."
Hugh covered the pan of gold with some robes, and told Jack and Joe to remain in the lodge while he went out. Half an hour later, he returned with a heavy double sack of buckskin into which the gold was poured, and this sack was put in a partly empty sack of flour, the flour being packed around the gold and on top of it, so that there seemed to be nothing but flour in the sack, which was then placed under the other property belonging to Hugh and Jack, between their beds.