“Here,” he tossed a pair to me. “You’ll find these better than riding boots. This time we go afoot.”
Later, when breakfast was eaten, he made up a shoulder-pack for himself, and showed me how to prepare its fellow. Only actual necessaries found place therein. Extra moccasins, a few pounds of flour, a little packet of tea, pepper and salt, a tin plate and cup; these were laid upon a pair of heavy blankets, and tightly rolled in a square of thin canvas. A broad band of soft buckskin ran from the upper corners of the pack over one’s forehead. A loop slipped over each shoulder, leaving the hands free. I was astonished at the ease with which I could walk under this forty-pound burden. From among the post stores Barreau had long since armed me with a rifle that was twin to his own. Between us we carried a hundred cartridges. A butcher knife and a small hatchet apiece fitted us for all emergencies. Thus equipped we set out, bearing away up the Sicannie toward the grim range of peaks that cut the skyline into ragged notches.
Ten miles upstream Barreau located the cluster of lodges he sought as our first objective point—the summer camp of Two Wolves and his band. There for two nights and a day we lingered, sitting in comical gravity for hours at a time in the lodge of the chief. The upshot of this lengthy council was that Two Wolves’ son girded a pack on his broad shoulders and joined us when we left the camp.
Thereafter I lost count of the days. Possibly, if the need arose, I could detail the camps we made, the streams we crossed, the huge circle we swung upon, the crossing and doubling back upon our own trail; but there is no need. Suffice it to say that we did these things. It was no pleasure jaunt that we three went upon. Crow Feathers was a man of iron in the matter of covering ground.
He knew the haunt of every tribe and offshoot of a tribe, every petty chief’s following, and every family group in the North, it seemed to me. If he did not lead us to them all, he at least tried. The smoky smell of an Indian lodge became as familiar to my nostrils as the odor of food. And in every camp, over the peace pipe, Barreau talked “trade,” with Crow Feathers to vouch for him. Barreau spoke the tongue like a native, but there were lodges wherein neither Cree nor French patois was spoken or understood, and, when we encountered such, the wisdom of Crow Feathers smoothed the way. He used the sign language in all its bewildering variety. I, myself, picked up words and phrases here and there, comprehended a few of the simpler signs, but Crow Feathers lingers with me as a past master in wordless communication with his race. Barreau, even, used to wonder at the astonishing amount of information Crow Feathers could impart with a few languid motions of his hands. He made a right able interpreter.
Insensibly the days shortened. I recollect with what surprise I wakened one morning to find hoar frost thick on my blanket, and a scum of ice fringing the little creek beside which we slept. Hard on that I observed the turning of the leaves, the red and yellow tints of autumn. And about this time Crow Feathers left us; took up his pack one day at noon, shook hands solemnly with each of us, and a moment later was lost in the still, far-spreading woods. Three days after that Barreau and I, in the midst of a thinly timbered belt of land, came suddenly upon a clear-cut trail. Even my limited experience told me that it was made by man-guided animals.
“The chumps,” Barreau drawled. “They are ten miles out of their way. I didn’t expect to hit their trail till to-morrow. Well, they should be at the post now. We may as well follow them in.”
“How is it,” I voiced a thing that puzzled me, “that there are no wagon tracks? Are you sure this is Montell’s outfit?”
“No other,” he answered. “For many reasons. By the mule tracks, for one. You, of course, could not see them in the dark, but there was a mule herd with the bull-train. Loaded wagons are too hard to handle in this woods country. We have always used pack-mules this side of the Peace.”
“Oh,” said I, and, my mystery solved, I forbore further inquiry. We tramped along the trail in silence. Then, all at once, he flung out an abrupt question. Curiously enough, the thing he spoke of had just drifted into my mind.