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

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well, say we do it. We can start to-morrow or next day; the Indians'll be here now two or three days at least, killing and drying meat, and we can easily enough go there, and come back and catch them before they leave these parts. You and I can go alone, or we can take Joe; or if you like, we can ask anybody else that we want to go down there with us. It'll be a nice little trip."

So it was arranged that within a day or two they should start for the Yellowstone River, to get the sheep's head.

It was the second day after that they finally got away. Joe wanted to go with them, and when they told Jackson what they intended doing, he said that he too would like to go. This made a party of four capable men, to whom no danger could come. They took a couple of pack horses, to carry their bedding and provisions, but no shelter, for the weather was bright and dry, and there seemed no prospect of rain. On their way to the Yellowstone they rode constantly through buffalo and antelope, tame and unsuspicious, and just moving aside from the track of the travellers as they passed along. That night they camped on the little stream just where Jack had killed the sheep, and reaching camp before sundown, Hugh and Jack rode up the stream to the tree where the sheep's head had been placed, took it down and brought it to camp. The ashes of the fire of the year before, and the bones of the sheep from which they had cut the meat called up old memories. Even the places where the lines had been tied for drying the meat were remembered.

Jack was glad enough to get this head again. As Hugh had said, it was a very fine one. The great horns swung around in more than a complete curve, and although near the base they were more or less bruised and battered by the battles the old ram had fought, the tips of the horns were very nearly perfect. The skin of the head and neck had been picked by the birds and bleached by the weather, and Hugh said; "I'm not sure that it will do to use in covering the skull, son; but even if it is too hard and sunburned to make anything out of, I'd take it along. If we get another good ram on the trip you can take his scalp; but if we don't, maybe the man that puts up your head can make something out of this."

The next morning before starting back, they rode down to the Yellowstone River, and looked up and down the valley. There were some buffalo here too, and a few elk; but there was nothing to keep them, and they turned about and returned to the Piegan camp, which they reached that night.

For some days longer the camp remained here, killing buffalo and drying the meat. Then they moved east, one day's journey, to another little stream, and again hunted from here. By this time many buffalo had been killed, and many robes made. The parfleches were full of dried meat and back fat; and now presently the chiefs began to consult as to whether they should not go north again to the neighborhood of the mountains, for the women wished to gather roots and berries for the winter.

One evening when Jack came in from the hunt he saw a great crowd of people, men, women and children, gathered just outside of the circle. They seemed to be having a good time, for shouts of laughter and shrill screams from the women told that something was happening which amused them all.

Riding up to the edge of the crowd, Jack saw in the midst of it a little buffalo calf, standing there with its head down and tail in the air, facing with very determined attitude two or three small boys who were trying to approach and get hold of it. Every now and then one of the little fellows would get up his courage and venture close to the calf's head, when the calf would charge him and the boy would jump out of the way; but just as Jack came to a place where he could see, one of the boys went slowly forward toward the calf, and just as the calf began to charge, one of the boy's companions gave him a push forward, so that instead of dodging the calf he met its charge, and was knocked sprawling on the ground. Then everybody screamed with laughter, and the boy scrambled out of the way as fast as he could.

At one side of the ring of people, Jackson was standing, evidently much amused at what was going on. Jack called out to him, "What are they doing, Billy?"

"Why, I roped this calf to-day and brought him in to try to take him back to the river, where there are some cows, and raise him, but some of these small boys got bothering and teasing him, and I told them if they didn't let him alone I'd turn him loose, and let him take care of himself, and now it seems to me he's doing it pretty well; he's knocked a half dozen of 'em out of time already, and once in a while, if he gets real mad, he charges into the crowd, and I tell you they scatter."