It was not difficult for the trapper and the Indian to secure enough food, for both of them knew how to gather the wild foods of woods, river, and marsh.
It was not getting to be the time when the great waves of bird life roll southward, and as the Mississippi and its grand winding bottoms are one of the great highways of the winged millions, there was an endless procession of flocks coming and going.
When little Tim had a good day and the weather was mild, the trapper carried the sick boy to a spot where he could see the shining river and the wooded bluffs, gorgeous in autumn colors, for no river in the world surpasses the upper Mississippi in the almost inconceivable profusion of autumn flowers and in the gorgeous effects of mixed and blended green, gold, orange, reds, and crimson, all painted on a canvas far too vast for any human artist and almost too grand for human eye to drink in.
And above all this beauty on earth, spread the blue sky, with fleecy white clouds floating eastward.
“Uncle Barker,” the boy would ask, “what are the birds almost touching the clouds?”
“I can hear their call,” the old trapper answered, glad that Tim was beginning to take an interest in things, “I think they are martins, the kind that nested in the hollow trees at Fort Ridgely and in the big house the soldiers had built for them.”
Near the tepees stood an immense hollow elm. Around this tree a small flock of swifts gyrated in wide, noisy circles every evening.
“What are they doing!” asked Bill. “Where are they going?”
Tatanka smiled. “The Indian boys know,” he answered. “If your eyes are sharp, you can tell.”
Then Bill watched. Every time the swarm sailed, noisily chirping, over the big tree, some of the birds suddenly turned their wings against the air, and dropped into the dark hollow like so many stones. After half an hour the last bird had dropped to its sleeping-perch and Bill thumped the tree with his ax; he laid his ear to the tree and heard a great humming as of a hundred swarms of bees, and a few of the birds came out and fluttered about.