Lost with Lieutenant Pike / How from the Pawnee Village the boy named Scar Head marched with the young American Chief clear into the Snowy Mountains; how in the dead of winter they searched for the Lost River and thought that they had found it; and how the Spanish Soldiery came upon them and took them down to Santa Fé of New Mexico, where another surprise awaited them

by Edwin L. Sabin

VI
LIEUTENANT WILKINSON SAYS GOOD-BY

“Chief Pike asks you to go back with one man and find John Sparks.”

These were the words of Baroney, to Scar Head, who was just finishing breakfast so as to be ready to march.

A number of days had passed since the elk hunt, and several things had happened. Although the Americans were brave, the Great Spirit seemed to be angry with them for marching through the country. He gave them hungry camps, without wood and water. He sent rain on them, and made them sick. Chief Pretty Bird and another Osage man had left. They said that they wanted better hunting—but it was plain that they were afraid. And on the same day the Spanish trail had been blotted out by buffalo hoofs, and the Americans had lost it.

By the talk, this was bad. According to what Scar Head understood, Chief Pike depended upon the Spanish trail to guide him by the best road into the south and to the Comanches. The Spanish knew this country better than the Americans did.

The rain kept falling, and the men straggled. Yesterday afternoon the warrior Sparks had dropped behind. He had pains in his joints, which the medicine-man had not been able to cure: “rheumatism.” He could not ride a horse and he could scarcely walk, using his gun as a crutch. Last night he had not come into camp. The Spanish trail was lost, again; and Sparks was lost, too.

Scar Head was glad to go back and look for him. He liked Sparks. He liked all the men and was getting to know them by their names: queer names. Each man had two—one for each other and one for the chiefs. There was “Jake” and “Carter”; the same man. And “Jerry” and “Jackson”; and “Tom” and “Dougherty”; and “John” and “Brown”; and “Hugh” and “Menaugh”; and “Bill” and “Meek”; and “Joe” and “Ballenger”; and the others. The last two were head warriors, called “sergeant.” The medicine-man’s names were “John” and “Doctor Robinson.” The second chief’s names were “the left’nant” and “Lieutenant Wilkinson.” Chief Pike was “the cap’n” and “Lieutenant Pike.”

The warriors spoke only American, but they knew Indian ways. The most of them, Baroney said, had been on a long journey before with Lieutenant Pike, far into the north up a great river, into the country of the Sioux.