Mother stopped me, “Here, you little dunce,” she said, “you are not going to fight. You couldn’t fight anything. I don’t believe there is going to be a fight anyway. I have had too many such Crow scares.”
I wondered whether the Crows had wings like the crows in our country. She said that they were Indians like the Shoshones.
A Crow encampment (Crow Agency, Montana).
By this time the squaws had everything packed and ready to fling on to the horses that were standing about with their saddles on. The old bucks were gathered in small groups here and there talking all at the same time. But the excitement soon passed over; for the warriors came back after a little while to tell us that it was not Crows at all but a herd of buffaloes that had caused the scare. I was rather disappointed, for I wanted to see some fun. I began to think that they were cowards—the whole bunch of them. But they were not. The next day a band of about fifty young warriors left for some place. I could not find out where they were going, but they seemed to mean business.
For a while after this scare everything passed off peacefully. We fished and chased antelope, and one day I went with Washakie up into the mountains to kill elk. We had not gone far till we saw a large herd of these animals lying down. Leaving our horses, we crept up close to them. Washakie had a good gun, and at his first shot he hit a big cow elk. She ran about a minute before she fell. The chief told me to slip up and shoot her in the neck with my arrows till she was dead, then to cut her throat so that she would bleed freely; and to stay there till he came back. Well, I crept up as close as I dared, and shot every arrow I had at her. Then I climbed a tree. I guess she was dead before I shot her, but I was not sure, for I was afraid to go up near enough to see. Washakie followed the herd that ran down the canyon.
I stayed up the tree for some time, then came down quietly and went up to the elk and threw sticks at her, but she did not move, so I plucked up courage and cut her throat. She had been dead so long that she did not bleed a bit.
A Crow Indian tepee.
I waited and waited for Washakie to come back. After a while I began to get scared. I thought that the bears would smell the elk and finding me there would eat me up, so I put off to where we had left our horses; but I could not find them. Then I started back to the elk, but I could not find it. I was so bewildered that I did not know what to do. The timber was thick, and I was getting more scared all the time. I tried again to find our horses and failed. By this time the sun had gone down, and it was very gloomy among the trees. I climbed another tree and waited for a long time. I was afraid to call for fear of bringing a bear on to me.