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

by George Bird Grinnell

“That’s bully, Hugh,” said Jack, “I love to hear your stories.”

“I’ve forgotten,” went on Hugh, “what year it was, but it was in the early ’60’s that Matt Carroll and George Steele were running their trading-post in Benton. Both Carroll and Steele had been working for the American Fur Company in years gone by, but now they had formed a partnership, and were trading on their own account. The country was full of buffalo and there was a big trade in robes. Of course the Piegans did all their trading at Benton, and every now and then a party of Bloods and Blackfeet would bring in a lot of robes from the north. These Indians were masters of the whole country then, and they were pretty independent. They were fighting all their enemies and now and then they killed a white man, when they got a good chance. Of course, they were not openly at war, but any Indian who saw a white man that had something that he wanted was liable to kill him if he got a good chance. Now, at this time in one of the Piegan camps close to Benton there was a young fellow named Lone Wolf, who did his trading with Carroll & Steele, and one day George Steele bought a horse from him, a bay pony, that Lone Wolf said was an awful good horse and a good buffalo runner. After Lone Wolf had sold the horse he got sorry that he had done so, and he used to come to the store and sit around looking sullen and sad; his heart was pretty bad.

“Bruce, who was then only a boy, noticed that Lone Wolf was sulky, but he did not know what the matter was. He had charge of the horses, and, of course, fed and watered those that were kept in the barn, a big log-stable with a padlock and chain on the door.

“One morning as he was coming back from watering the horses and drove them into the stable, he saw Lone Wolf sitting on the ground not far off. Bruce followed the horses into the stable, tied them in their stalls and fed them, but before he had finished, someone called to him, and he went out of the barn to find out what was wanted.

“He wasn’t gone more than a few minutes, and when he came back and went into the stable he saw in a moment that the bay horse was missing. He ran to the door and looked out. Lone Wolf was gone, too; up and down the flat and along the bluffs he could see no sign of the Indian nor of the horse, nor was there any dust rising to show where they had gone.

“Bruce went into the store and told Steele, and Steele blew him up for his carelessness. Of course, there was nothing to be done, but Steele told him that he must look out and not lose any more horses.

“It made the boy feel pretty badly to have had the horse taken right under his nose, and to have had an Indian play such a trick on him. Bruce made up his mind that he would try to get the horse back, but he knew that this was going to be quite a job.

“For some time after that Lone Wolf was not seen in Benton. If he wanted anything at the store, he sent in for it by his wife or some other Indian and did not send to Carroll & Steele’s, but to the other trading-store.

“Old Four Bears—the same one that you boys know—used to come into town every day to Carroll & Steele’s and tell Bruce about the good luck that Lone Wolf was having chasing buffalo with his fast horse. Every day or two he’d come in and report that Lone Wolf had killed six buffalo or four buffalo or eight buffalo or eleven, and when Four Bears made these reports, why, he used to laugh over them as if they were the best jokes in the world, but you can imagine that they didn’t seem very funny to Bruce.

“Every day, when he went out to ride a horse, Bruce would go off toward the Piegan camp, and hide in the brush or on top of some hill, and watch the camp with a field glass, so as to find out how they were treating the stolen horse, in the hope that some day he would have a chance to steal it back again. There didn’t seem to be much likelihood that this would happen, because the camp was a big one, and when the horses were sent out they were almost always herded by one or two boys. Besides that, Bruce found that they had tried to change the looks of the pony. His ears were tied back so that he looked crop-eared, and they had painted him with white clay in spots, so that at a distance he looked like a pinto. However, after a while Bruce found out which horse it was and then discovered that he was always necked to another horse.