Jack Among the Indians; Or, A Boy's Summer on the Buffalo Plains

by George Bird Grinnell

It was now September. Jack had been in the camp more than two months, and besides the old men that he had come to know, he had also made the acquaintance of a number of young fellows of about his own age. From Joe and Hugh, he had learned a few words of Piegan, so that, often, he could understand what people were talking about, and sometimes mustered up courage to speak a few words himself.

One day, not long after his conversation with Hugh about returning home, the news was called out through the camp, that in three days the village would move over to Willow Rounds, on the Marias River, and would stay there a long time. When he heard this, Hugh told Jack that he thought it best, that from there, they should go into Benton and try to go down the river.

That evening Joe came to the lodge and proposed that the next day they should go up into the Bear Paw Mountains, to hunt deer. "Three others are going," he said, "Bull Calf, The Mink and Handsome Face. We ought to go early and I think we can kill some deer."

"All right, Joe," said Jack, "I'll go, and be ready to start any time you say."

"Well, then," said Joe, "let's go by the time the sun rises."

Bright and early next morning, the party started and rode up the mountain. It was not very long before they reached the pine timber, and soon after, they separated into two parties, Bull Calf and The Mink going off on the south side of the hills, while Jack and Joe and Handsome Face kept up on the western slope.

After riding through the timber for quite a long time, they came to some little parks, quite surrounded by timber, with pretty little streams flowing through them, making, as Jack thought, the best possible feeding grounds for deer. After they had passed through several of these without seeing any game, but finding plenty of tracks and old sign, Joe, who was a little ahead, stopped his horse, raised his hand as a sign for the others to wait, and slipped off on foot through the trees. In a very few moments, he had returned, and signing them to dismount and follow him, he led the way through the silent timber. All the boys wore moccasins, and treading with hunter's care, went along like so many ghosts. No twig snapped under their feet, nor did they allow the branches or bushes to scrape against their legs. After a few moments quick walk, Joe turned, and making a sign for caution, dropped to his knees and crept through the low bushes to the edge of a little park. There, as they peered through the leaves, they saw a pretty sight. Three yearling deer were feeding slowly toward them, and were now not more than fifty yards away. They acted as if they had finished their breakfast, and did not seem hungry, but rather as if they were looking for a place to lie down. They would walk along for a few steps, and then one stopping, would nibble at the grass, while the others kept on, and then, perhaps one of these would stop and be passed by the other two. In this careless fashion, they came up to within twenty-five or thirty yards of where the boys knelt, and then one of them suddenly folded his long, slender legs under him and lay down. The others stood by him, one broadside to the watchers, the other head on. Joe signed to Handsome Face, and then the two boys with arrows on the string, rose to their knees, and shot together. Each of the two deer sprang high in the air, and coming down, looked about with raised head and alert ears. The deer that was lying down, stretched his head up high and looked at them, and then about it, but did not spring to its feet. The boys could see in each of the two standing deer, the arrows buried nearly to the feathers. In a moment, the deer at which Handsome Face had shot, fell on the ground, and Joe's deer immediately afterward lay down.

Jack whispered to Joe, "Shall I kill the other?"

"Yes," said Joe, "kill him, sure." Jack took steady aim at the slender neck showing above the grass, and fired, and the deer's head disappeared.

"Well," said Jack, as the boys rose to their feet, and walked out toward the animals, "that seems to me like butchering. Of course we can use the meat, and we need the hides, but I don't think there's much fun in killing game that's as tame as that."