Deerfoot in The Mountains

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

But the diversified landscape did not lack animal life. The most interesting sight was that of two grizzly bears, that were frolicking like a couple of puppies in an open space at the foot of a slight elevation. Deerfoot held the glass pointed at them for some minutes and more than once smiled at the odd picture. The great hulking brutes tumbled, rolled, pawed and boxed each other, all the while pretending to bite and yet taking care that neither tooth nor nail did harm. Then one would start to run off, as if frightened, with the other in hot pursuit. When overtaken, and sometimes before, the fugitive would wheel and cuff and bite at the other, as if in a dreadful rage. You know how amusing the antics of kittens and puppies are. Imagine, if you can, two enormous bears disporting themselves in the same comical fashion, and you will understand why the Shawanoe watched the couple minute after minute, forgetting for the time the serious business on which he was engaged.

But this was not all that attracted him in his surroundings. From out the undergrowth on the northern side of the stream forming the outlet of the lake came two or three hundred buffaloes, their dusky bodies imparting a strange appearance of agitation to that portion of the landscape. They headed for the stream, which was no more than a hundred feet in width, and plunged in, pausing long enough to drink, flirting their tails and tossing their heads, bellowing and crowding one another. The water was too shallow to force them to swim, but it was splashed and flung in all directions. When those at the front emerged they broke into a gallop, with the others dashing tumultuously after them.

Their course brought them within a few rods of the base of the elevation on which Deerfoot was standing. He walked down the slope until quite near the head of the herd, when he brought his rifle to his shoulder and sent a bullet just back of the foreleg of one of the bulls. The stricken beast made a single plunging dive and then rolled over dead. Being on the fringe of the herd he was not trampled upon, and none of his companions paid any attention to him. The bison is—or rather was—a stupid creature, his own destruction often resulting from his lack of ordinary intelligence.

Deerfoot waited until the last animal had passed, when he went forward to where the carcass of the game lay and deftly extracted its tongue. He did not touch any other portion, but, washing the delicacy in the stream, carried it to the small grove of trees which he had fixed upon in his mind as the place of the encampment of the Nez Perces, on their first day after leaving their village.

Before he reached the shelter of the clump of trees the quick eye of the Shawanoe saw the imprints of hoofs, and signs of a party of horsemen having halted at the spot. Chief Amokeat and his Nez Perces had made their first meal on fish drawn from the lake, as was shown by the fragments of their feast scattered round. Considerable ashes indicated the spot where a fire had been kindled, in the usual primitive manner of spinning a light pointed stick, whose sharpened end was thrust into another dry branch.

Thus Deerfoot's calculations proved to be right. He had reached the scene of the midday halt of the Nez Perces by traveling about two-thirds of the distance of his predecessors. With his flint and steel he soon had a blaze going. Over it he broiled the bison tongue, cut into thin strips, and ate his fill. The meal was a big one for him, and he would not go out of his way to procure any more food for twenty-four hours or more. Taking a long draught from the cold, crystalline waters, he resumed his journey, which was due north, his blanket fastened about his shoulders, and his rifle sometimes resting in the crook made by bending his left arm at the elbow, after the style of modern sportsmen, held sometimes in a trailing position, and again reposing upon his shoulder.

For two miles or more he kept to the trail, inasmuch as it was direct and nothing was to be gained by leaving it. With his senses alert, he finally turned to the right, in order to take advantage of a mass of rocks on ground so elevated that a more extensive view than the former one could be secured. He climbed as nimbly as a monkey to the top, glanced over the many square miles spread out before his gaze and then looked northward.

Ah! he saw something suggestive. The glass was pointed toward the spot and instantly confirmed the unaided eye. In the horizon, in the mist of a stretch of wooded country, he observed a faint, almost invisible line of vapor climbing upward into the cold blue sky, and gradually dissolving, until at the height of a hundred feet or less all trace of it vanished.

The most careful scrutiny could not tell anything more. The spot was between fifteen and twenty miles away, with the roughest sort of country intervening. It was a good day's journey distant, but in the same moment that Deerfoot made his interesting discovery he resolved to thread his way to the place without a minute's halt on his part until he reached his destination.

His quick mind instantly saw several explanations of the "sign." It could not be the Nez Perces riding north, for it was impossible that they had lagged to such an extent on the road. If it was Amokeat and his party, they must be returning from their raid, or hunting expedition, or whatever had engaged their energies. It would seem more likely that the Indians belonged to some other tribe. Be that as it may, the only means of answering the question was by finding out for himself, and that Deerfoot started to do with the grim, unshakable resolution of his nature.