Sinopah, the Indian Boy

by James Willard Schultz

At that Lone Bull started off on the run for camp. Sinopah ate a few more berries and then began to get cold from standing still so long. He started to walk around, faster and faster, and farther and farther from the trees, and on a larger circle than ever came to some strange-looking tracks in the snow. They were big, round tracks, but not far apart; not near so far as he could step. Most of them showed the heel of the feet, so it was easy to see which way the animal had been going. He looked at the tracks a long time. "Now, if Grandfather Red Crane were only here, he could tell me what kind of an animal made these tracks," he said to himself.

Sinopah made another circle and once more came to the strange-looking tracks. "I do wish I knew what animal made them," he said. "Well, I will just follow them a little way and perhaps I can learn what it was."

The trail of the animal was away from the river and toward a sandstone cliff. Sinopah followed it through the timber. At one place the animal had stood on its hind feet and clawed the trunk of a cottonwood tree, scattering many small pieces of the bark around on the snow. A little farther on, it had stood looking and listening for something, for here the snow was all packed smooth by its big feet. Still farther on, it had sat down in the snow, and had left the imprint of a long tail. By that Sinopah knew that this was not the trail of a bear, for bears' tails are no longer than a boy's hand.

"It isn't a wolf either," he thought, "for wolves have very bushy tails. The mark of this one in the snow looks as if it has very short hair. Why, it may be that I am following an otter."

Thinking that, he hurried forward on the trail and soon came near the sandstone cliff. Here there was not so much timber. The ground sloped sharply up to the foot of the cliff, and on it were scattered a number of large and small rocks. He could see the trail winding around among the rocks, and said to himself again, "It must be an otter's trail."

He did not stop to think that the tracks were ten times too large to have been made by an otter. Nor did he know that an otter, when traveling through snow, does not walk: it lays its front feet back against its breast and pushes itself along with its hind feet, making a smooth trough in the snow with two dots in it at intervals, like this:—

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Sinopah now began climbing the slope, and soon came to the very foot of the cliff. Right in front of him the trail ended at the mouth of a narrow low hole in the rock. He walked right up to it and tried to see in, to see the animal, but a few feet back there was nothing but the darkness of night. Then on the floor of the cave he saw some bones; big leg-bones and rib and backbones that looked like those of buffalo and deer, and he suddenly became scared. It was enough to scare any boy, that black cave, the freshly gnawed bones with shreds of red meat still hanging to them. He suddenly gave a little squeal of fright and ran back down the slope and toward the bullberry patch as fast as he could go.

No one was there to meet him and he ran on and on toward camp, soon meeting his mother and old Red Crane and Lone Bull and Otaki and their mother. As quickly as he could, he told the old man about the trail of the animal and the cave and gnawed bones.

"Ah ha! And you saw gnawed bones in the cave!" Red Crane exclaimed. "And the tracks leading to the place were big and round? Well, my young hunter, it was not an otter you were following, it was a lynx; perhaps even a mountain lion."