Chatanskah shook his head sorrowfully.
"Chatanskah has not forgotten," he said, "but he hoped that a bird might come and whisper in the ears of his new brothers and tell them to stay with the Dakota. In the Sky Mountains you will find no sweet buffalo meat. There are no teepees to shield you from the wind. Mahtotopah will waste his strength on the rocks. But you are brave men, and I know you will go on until the Great Spirit calls you."
CHAPTER IX
THE HORSE STEALERS
Chatanskah made good his promise as soon as the tribe had secured the spoils of the hunt. He collected a little band of picked warriors, presented us with powder and lead captured from the Chippewa to replenish the reserve stock Corlaer carried in a great ox-horn and leather pouch, and we said good-by to the huddle of teepees, now surrounded by high-built racks of jerking meat and pegged-out hides in process of tanning. The last breath of Summer had left the air, and we were glad of the buffalo-skin robes the Wahpeton gave us. But there was advantage, too, in the keen zest of the lower temperature, for it inspired us to greater exertions, and we traveled at a rate we could not have attained during the hot months.
Our course lay up the valley of the Missouri in a north-westerly direction, more truly north than west, as I discovered. We journeyed so for many days, encountering frequently bands of the other Dakota Council Fires, Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, Yankton and Yanktonai. Once a raiding band of Arikara, savage warriors, with buffalo horns woven into their long hair instead of feathers, and wolf-skin breechclouts, swooped down upon us from the north. But they were looking for an undefended village to yield them the buffalo-meat they had been denied by some perverse trick of fate, and they sheered off at the discharge of our muskets, carrying their dead with them.
Each night we expected to awake to find the ground covered with snow, for the Winter usually develops earlier in these western lands than on the seacoast; but Providence aided us, and at the end of two weeks we met a wandering band of Yanktonai, who told us the Teton bands had crossed the Missouri and followed westward another river bordered by sandhills,* which entered the Missouri a day's march ahead of us. These Yanktonai were the first horse Indians we saw. They were of leaner build than the eastern Dakota, with keen, predatory faces and a harsher speech, matchless riders. Their mounts, which they stole from the Southern tribes—who in turn stole from the Spaniards—or bred from stolen stock, were small, clean-limbed beasts, bespeaking the Arab strain the Spaniards favor. Their arms were the lance in place of the tomahawk, and bow and arrow, and they carried also a small, round shield of the thick, rugged neck-hide of the buffalo.
*I think Ormerod refers to the Platte. From here on, his account of his wanderings increases in vagueness, owing to lack of established place names.—A.D.H.S.
Chatanskah was much concerned at the news that the Teton had moved farther west, for he knew that his return journey to his own villages would probably be delayed by snow; but when we offered to relieve him of his pledge he scouted the idea and insisted upon accompanying us as he had promised. And to say truth, as we penetrated deeper into this land of incredible distances and unknown peoples, we appreciated as we had not before the advantage of his knowledge and protection. The horse Indians, as we were to learn at first-hand, were natural thieves, who stole for the love of thieving and whose hands were instinctively raised against all men. To them, likewise, the name of the Long House, which had reached even the Wahpeton, was all but meaningless. I am sure the Yanktonai band would have murdered us cheerfully, if it had not been for Chatanskah's escort.
We easily identified the river they had described to us by its size and the white shimmer of the sandhills along the bank. Luckily for us the Missouri was low, and it was a task of no difficulty to ford and swim its bed at a point just above the other river's mouth. But the water was bitter cold, and we were glad to build two roaring fires and broil ourselves between walls of flame.