“It is good,” continued the Fire Eater. “The wagon-soldiers will not find a trail on the high hills. The snow would stop their wheels. They will dream that the Chis-chis-chash were made into birds and have flown away.” The Fire Eater chuckled as he loaded his pipe.
Then Big Hand: “I have heard, brother, that ponies passed the herders at the mouth of the canon last smoke. It was cold, and they had their robes tight over their heads. It is bad.”
“Yes, you talk straight. It is bad for the pony-trails to show below where the land breaks. Some dog of an Absaroke who follows the Grey Fox may see them. Ponies do not go to live in the hills in the time of snow. The ponies will not travel straight, as the herders drive them back. They will understand. With another sun, I shall call the council. It will talk the herders’ eyes open. The young men have closed ears in these days. The cold makes their bones stiff. Brother, when we were young we could see a horse pass in the night. We could smell him. We could tell if he had a man on his back.”
Big Hand gave wise consideration to his companion’s statement, saying it was as he spoke. “Brother, those big horses which we took from the pony-soldiers run badly in the herd. They gather in a bunch and run fast. They go over the herders when they see the valley. They will do nothing unless you strike them over the head. They are fools like their white riders were.”
So the old men gravely passed the pipe over the little things of life, which to them bore all their interest in the world. The squaw combed her hair and from time to time put fresh sticks on the fire. After a while the boy woke up and stretched himself cubbishly across his father’s knees. The ancient one gave him a piece of fresh meat, which he held in both hands as he gnawed it, smearing his chubby face with grease. Having devoured his morsel he blinked sleepily, and the old Indian tucked him away in the warm recesses of his old buffalo-robe couch, quite naked, as it was their custom to sleep during the winter nights. Long sat the smokers, turning their tongues over youthful remembrances, until Big Hand arose and drawing his robe about him, left the lodge.
The Fire Eater removed the small buckskin bag which contained his little brown bat’s skin from his scalp-lock and smoked to it saying: “Keep the big horses from running down the canyon—keep the eyes of the herders open while I sleep—keep the little boy warm—keep the bad spirits outside the lodge after the fire can no longer see them.” With these devotions concluded, he put the relic of the protection of the Good Gods in his war-bag which hung on his resting-mat over his head. Undressing, he buried himself in his buffalo robes. The fire died down, the tom-toms and singing in the adjoining lodges quieted gradually, and the camp slept. All was still, and it was bitter cold outside, though the Chis-chis-chash lay snugly under their hairy rugs, drawing them over their heads, shutting out the world of spirits and sound and cold.
In the ceaseless round of time the night was departing to the westward, when as though it were in a dream the old warrior was conscious of noise. His waking sense was stirred. Rapid, frosty crackling of snow ground by horse’s hoofs came through the crevices of his covering. All unusual, he sat up with a savage bang, as it were, and bent a stiff ear to the darkness. His senses were electric, but the convolutions of his brain were dead. A rifle shot, far away but unmistakable. Others followed; they came fast. But not until the clear notes of a bugle blazed their echoing way up the rock walls did he, the Fire Eater, think the truth. He made the lodge shake with the long yell of war. He did the things of a lifetime now and he did them in a trained, quick way. He shoved his feet into his moccasins and did no more because of the urgency of the case; then he reached for his rifle and belt and stood in the dark lodge aroused. His sleep was gone but he did not comprehend. Listening for the briefest of moments, he heard amid the yelping of his own people the dull, resonant roar which he knew was the white man’s answer.
Fired into a maddened excitement he snatched up his precious boy, and seizing a robe ran out of the lodge followed by his squaw. Overhead the sky was warming but: the canon was blue dark. Every moment brought the shots and roar nearer. Plunging through the snow with his burden, the Fire Eater ran up a rocky draw which made into the main canyon. He had not gone many arrow-flights of distance before the rushing storm of the pony-soldiers swept past his deserted lodge. Bullets began to whistle about him, and glancing back he saw the black form of his squaw stagger and lie slowly down in the snow. He had, by this time, quite recovered the calm which comes to the tired-out man when tumult overtakes him. Putting the boy down on a robe behind a rock, and standing naked in the frosty air he made his magazine gun blaze until empty; then picking the boy up ran on higher up the rocks until he was on the table land of the top of the canon. Here he resumed his shooting, but the darkness and distance made it difficult to see. The noise of the fight clattered and clanged up from the depths to him and echoed down from above where the charge had gone. Other Indians joined him and they poured their bullets into the pony-soldiers. The Bad Gods had whispered to the Yellow-Eyes; they had made them see under the snow. The Chis-chis-chash were dead men, but they would take many with them to the spirit-land. The Fire Eater felt but a few cartridges in his belt and knew that he must use them sparingly. The little boy sat crying on the buffalo robe. Holding his smoking rifle in one hand, he passed the other over his scalp-lock. The bat-skin medicine was not there. For the first time since the Good Gods had given it to him, back in his youth, did he find himself without it. A nameless terror overcame him. He was a truly naked man in the snow, divested of the protection of body and soul.
