Jack in the Rockies: A Boy's Adventures with a Pack Train

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well, what did they do for smallpox, Hugh? How did they cure themselves?"

"Why, they didn't know anything about curing themselves, son. When a man got smallpox, or got sick, he just went into a sweat-lodge, and took a sweat, and came out and plunged into the river to cool off, and the ice was running, and some of 'em never came up again, and some of those that did come up were so weak from the shock that they could not get to the shore, and just drowned. If we get to the Blackfoot camp this summer, you ask old man Chouquette about it. He was here then; he'll tell you about it, just the same as he told me."

While Hugh had been talking, the boat had cast off and had once more started up the river.

It was afternoon, and Hugh was dozing in his chair, tilted up against the cabin, while Jack as usual was watching the river banks, when suddenly from behind a little hill that formed the end of a hog back, which extended well out into the bottom, he saw a herd of seventy or eighty buffalo, come running as hard as they could across the bottom, and plunge into the river just above the boat. The great animals ran as if frightened, and seemed to regard nothing but the danger behind them. As the boat went along, and the buffalo swam to cross the stream, they came nearer and nearer together, and at last it was evident that the buffalo would pass very close to the boat. They swam rapidly, and with them were many little calves, swimming on the down stream side of their mothers, and going swiftly and easily. Jack shouted to Hugh, who, with him, watched the buffalo, and in a very few minutes the boat was actually in the midst of the herd. The animals did not attempt to turn about, but swam steadily after their leaders, and some of them actually swam against the boat, and, only then seeming to understand their danger, turned about and, grunting, snorting, and bellowing, climbed up on each other in tremendous fright. As they came to the boat Jack at first had started to get his rifle, but Hugh called him back, and they both descended to the lower deck, where, with the other passengers, and the deck hands, they were actually within arms length of the buffalos. The mate, forming a noose with a rope, threw it over the head of a two-year-old, and half a dozen of the roustabouts, pulling on the rope, lifted the animal's head up on the deck, when the mate killed it, and it was presently hauled aboard and butchered. As they returned to the upper deck, having watched the buffalo, after the boat had passed, swim to the other bank and climb out of the water, and then stop and look at the boat, Jack said to Hugh, "Well, I saw a lot of buffalo last year, but it sort of excites one to see them again as close as those were."

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's so; but there was no use in your getting your gun, as you started to. I don't want you to act like all the rest of these pilgrims that come up the river, and to be shooting at everything you see that's alive. There'd have been no more fun in shooting one of those buffalo in the water there, than there'd be in shooting a cow on the range. Of course, if a man's hungry, it's well enough for him to butcher; but if he just wants meat, and there's somebody else to do the butchering, he might just as well let him do it. I always used to like to hunt, and I do still, but it's no fun for me to kill a calf in a pen, or to chop off a chicken's head.

"That's so, Hugh," said Jack; "it would have been no more to shoot one of those buffalos in the water than it was for the mate to kill that two-year-old."

"That's so," said Hugh; "it would have been just the same thing, and you don't envy him the work he did, I expect."

"No indeed," said Jack, "not much."

"Now, if you want to fire a few shots," said Hugh, "if you want a little practice with your gun, get it out the next time we get close to the bank, and shoot at a knot in some cottonwood tree. I can watch with the glasses and see where you hit, and you can get some practice with your rifle, but won't show up a tenderfoot."

The sun was low that evening when they reached Wolf Point, the agency for the Assinaboine Indians, and it seemed as if all the Indians there must have clustered about the landing-place to welcome the boat; men, clad in fringed buckskin shirts and leggings, and with eagle feathers in their hair; bright-shawled women, carrying babies on their backs; small boys, naked, save for a pair of leggings and a breech-clout; and little girls, some wearing handsome buckskin dresses, trimmed with elk-teeth, and clinging to their mothers' skirts, made up the assemblage. Most interesting to Jack were the many travois, each one drawn by a dog. Some of these were very wolf-like in appearance; others might have been big watch dogs taken from the front door yard of some eastern farm house. All seemed well-trained and patient; and when, a little later, some of them started off for the agency buildings, dragging loads that had been piled on the travois, they bent sturdily to their work, and dug their feet into the ground.