"Kyai-yo!" Tsistsaki exclaimed. "He knows that real meat is the best; it is only that he must be continually making objections that he talks that way. Pay no attention to him; kill real meat for us as usual."
"Oh, kill elk or deer along with the buffalo! Kill some badgers if they want them! Anything for peace in camp!" my uncle exclaimed.
It was easy enough to get the buffalo; they were always in the valley within sight of camp. That morning we found a herd within a mile of it, killed five fat animals and had the meat all loaded upon the following wagon by nine o'clock. The teamster then headed for camp, and we went on to kill what our horses could pack of some other kind of meat.
Now, we did not want to ride into the brush-filled groves along the river in quest of elk and deer, for as likely as not we should be ambushed by some wandering war party. We therefore turned back through the grove in which the men were at work and thence went on down the big game trail running from the mouth of the Musselshell down the Missouri Valley. Where it entered the first of the narrow bottoms we turned off. We had gone no more than a couple of hundred yards when four bull elk rose out of a patch of junipers on the hill to our right and inquisitively stared at us. I slipped from my horse, took careful aim, and shot one of them.
We tethered our horses close to my kill and were butchering it when we were startled by a loud but distant hail and sprang for our rifles, which were leaning against some brush several steps away. We looked down into the bottom under us and there, just outside the narrow grove that fringed the river, we saw five Indians standing all in a row.
"Ha! Another war party, and no doubt another invitation to a smoke that would be the end of us!" Pitamakan exclaimed indignantly.
CHAPTER VII
LAME WOLF PRAYS TO HIS RAVEN
That morning I had not forgotten to sling on my telescope before leaving camp. I got it out, then took a good look at the men, and said to Pitamakan, "They don't appear to be a war party; they are all old men, and some have large packs upon their backs!"