Watching my chance, I jumped off and almost broke my neck; but I got up and put back towards camp as hard as I could run. The Indian turned, dashed up, and threw his lasso over me. After dragging me several rods he stopped, and hit me with his quirt, telling me to get back on his horse or he would put an arrow through me. I cried and begged him to let me go; but he made me get on again, and then he struck off as fast as he could go. I noticed, however, that he kept looking back every little while.
Pretty soon he stopped and told me to get off. As I jumped he gave me a lick over the head with his quirt that made me see stars for a few minutes. Then he started off on the run again; but after going about fifty yards he stopped, pulled his bow and arrow out of his quiver and started towards me as if he intended to put an arrow through me. He came but a few steps, then suddenly whirled his horse and off he went over the prairie.
I soon saw what caused his hurry. A short distance away were some Indians coming towards me as fast as they could travel. When they reached me, they stopped, and one of them told me to get on behind him and he would take me to my mother. I climbed up double quick. Before we got to the tepees I met mother coming out to find me. She was crying. She took me off the horse and threw her arms around me. One of Pocatello’s Indians, she said, was trying to steal me and she never expected to find her white papoose again.
Some Indians happened to see me get on my horse behind the Indian and told my mother, and Washakie had sent those Indians after me, before we got very far away. Mother stayed close to me after that; but I had had such a scare that I didn’t go very far from the tepee without her. The chief told me never to go alone after my horse if he got away again, but to let him know and he would have the pony brought back. “If Pocatello’s Indians,” he said, “could get you, they would swap you for a whole herd of ponies, and then it would be ‘good-by Yagaki.’” “Yagaki,” by the way, was my Indian name. It meant “the crier.” They gave it to me because I mimicked the squaws and papooses one day when they were bawling about something.
“I jumped from my horse and raised her up.”
CHAPTER FIVE BREAKING CAMP
The camp finally began to break up in earnest. Small bands went off in different directions to their various hunting grounds that had been decided on by the council. We were among the last to leave. There were about sixty tepees and two hundred and fifty Indians in our band. We had about four hundred horses, and more than five hundred dogs, it seemed to me.
Chief Washakie at that time was about twenty-seven years old. He was a very large Indian and good looking. His wife, Hanabi, did not appear to be more than twenty years old. She had only one child, a little boy papoose about six months old.
Pocatello was not so large as Washakie. He was a Shoshone, but his wife was a Bannock. She had three papooses when I first saw her. Pocatello was a wicked looking Indian. His tribe did more damage to the emigrants than any other tribe in the West. He wanted to be the big chief of the Shoshones; he thought he ought to be the leader because he was older than Washakie, but the tribe would not have it that way. He did draw away about five hundred of the tribe, however, and tried to change the tribe name to “Osasibi”; but Washakie’s Indians called them “Saididig,” which means dog-stealers.