Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest

by George Bird Grinnell

“No,” said Jack, “I don’t. I’ve seen her before, too, and she’s a mighty pleasant-faced woman, but I don’t know her.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “you wouldn’t think it to look at her, but she’s a granddaughter of one of the chief factors of the Hudson’s Bay Company about a hundred years ago. Old James Bull came over here, I reckon, about 1775, and after working for the Hudson’s Bay Company for a while he became one of the chief factors. He married a Piegan woman, and his son, Jim Bull, is living here yet. I reckon he must be about ninety years old. This woman is a daughter of Jim Bull. I reckon you never saw him. He’s a queer old chap, mighty religious nowadays, but they tell great stories about him in old times, about how wild he was. They say he used to go off on the warpath with the Blackfeet and fight the white traders, run off their horses, and of course kill the men when he could. Of course I don’t know whether these stories are true or not, but one of them is that one time he met a party of traders and trappers and the Blackfeet attacked them and were driven off. The fur traders were on one side of the river and the Blackfeet on the other, and after the fight was over Jim Bull, they say, came to the edge of the stream and called across to the fur traders, saying that he was a white man and wanted to make peace. He wanted to know if one of them wouldn’t cross over and talk it over with him. There was some talk among the white men as to whether it would be safe to do this, but finally one of them said he’d go over, and did so. The trader went over, and he and Bull sat down and smoked and talked about making peace and what a pity it was to fight and all that sort of thing, and then presently, while they were sitting there smoking, Jim Bull pulled out a pistol and killed the white man and scalped him and gave the war-cry and went off.

“Another time, according to the story, he went into camp dressed up like a Canadian engagé, that is, with a blanket coat, and so on, and told the man that was on guard over the horses that he was ordered to turn them out to feed. They were let go and scattered about feeding, and presently a party of Blackfeet that were hidden near by rounded them up and took them all off, and Bull went with them. He got to be so mean after a while that they say that one of the head men of one of these trapping outfits offered five hundred dollars for Bull’s head. Of course, he’s an old man now, and he gave up all these boy’s tricks a good many years ago. As I say, now he’s mighty religious. He had a Piegan woman and quite a number of children here in the country; pretty smart, too, all of them are.”

After supper was over Hugh said to Jack, “Now, son, there are quite a lot of trout in the creek there, and if you want to help out our breakfast you might go out and try to catch some.”

“A good idea, Hugh; I’ll do it,” and Jack jointed his rod and spent an hour or two fishing. The trout did not seem to care much for his flies, and at last he substituted for them a plain hook, which he baited with a grasshopper. With grasshoppers for bait, he caught about a dozen fish, none of them large, but enough to provide a breakfast for the party.

It was about sunset when he returned, and when Hugh saw his catch he said, “That’s good; those little trout are going to taste mighty well to-morrow morning, but give them to me and I’ll go out and dress them now. You know these Indians won’t eat fish nor anything that lives in the water, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Cross Guns’ wife should refuse to cook them. We may have to fry them ourselves to-morrow morning.”

It was full daylight before camp was astir, and the sun was sending long level beams from the eastern sky when Jack went out of the lodge and down to the stream to wash. When he returned Hugh was frying the fish, having thought that he had better get that done rather than to take the chance of Cross Guns’ wife refusing to do it. A little later the horses were brought in, and, soon after, bidding their host and hostess good-by, they started on toward the mountains.

As Jack drove his horse across the different channels of the river, which here cut the bottom up into a number of small, gravelly islands, he started a mother hooded merganser and her brood of tiny young from one of the banks, and was interested to see the speed with which they swam and dived to get out of reach. The trees and the prairie were alive with birds, and in a tall cottonwood he saw a great hawk’s nest, near which one of the parent birds was perched. As he rode up out of the bottom on to the higher prairie, he began to see the wall of mountains on the left, now much nearer than it had seemed when he had started the day before.

During that day’s ride no large animals had been seen. Scattered over the prairie at frequent intervals were the white bones of buffalo killed long ago, but no quadruped larger than a prairie dog or a cotton-tail showed itself.

Through the day, as he rode along, the country became more and more broken; the small streams which he crossed flowed at the bottom of deep valleys walled in by high, steep bluffs, and the pines and spruces of the mountains seemed to be coming closer and closer to him. At length, after descending the long hill, he found himself in the bottom of a rather large stream, and remembering Joe’s directions, turned to the left and followed it up toward the mountains. At length it forked, and at first he could not determine which branch of the stream to take, so he stopped, got off his horse, and waited for the wagon to come up.