With the Indians in the Rockies

by James Willard Schultz

We took the man's back trail, and, passing our deadfall, paused to note how plainly it could be seen from several points along the way. It was a wonder that he had noticed neither the deadfall nor our hard-packed, snowshoe trail.

"The gods were certainly good to us!" my partner exclaimed. "They caused him to look the other way as he passed."

The back trail led us straight to the foot of the steep mountain rising from the valley. There, in several places, the snow was scraped away to the ground, where evidently the man had searched for the pipestone ledge that was probably exposed somewhere near. Failing to find it, he had been obliged to go to the river and wade to the place where it again cropped out. His trail to the side hill came straight up the valley.

We certainly had something to think and talk about now—and also to worry about. Others of the enemy might come after pipestone, and there was our trail running straight to the place. Going back to the deadfall, we took out the fisher, but did not reset the trap; for we determined not to go thereafter within several miles of the pipestone falls. Another heavy snowfall would pretty much obliterate our trail, and we prayed that it would soon come. From that day, indeed, our sense of peace and security was gone.

Sitting within the lodge, we always had the feeling that the enemy might be close by, waiting to shoot us when we stepped outside. On the daily rounds of our traps we were ever watching places where a foe might be lying in wait. Pitamakan said that the only thing for us to do was to make strong medicine. Accordingly, he gave our bearskin to the sun; he lashed it firmly in the fork of a tree, and made a strong prayer to the shining god to guard us from being ambushed by the enemy.

Although we had long since lost track of the days of the week, we agreed in thinking that the discovery of the man's trail took place in "the moon before the moon when the web-feet come"; or, as the white man would say, in February. At the end of the next moon, then,—in March,—spring would come on the plains. Up where we were, however, the snow would last much longer—probably until May. Pitamakan said that we must leave the valley long before then, because with the first signs of spring the deer would be working back into the high mountains, and the Kootenays would follow them.

"How can we do that when, as you say, the pass cannot be crossed until summer?" I asked.

"There is another pass to the south of us," he replied, "the Two Medicine pass. There is no dangerous place anywhere along it."

"Then we can easily get out of here!" I exclaimed. "Let us start soon."

He shook his head. "No," he said. "We can't go until the snow melts from the low country where the Kootenays and Flatheads winter. We have to go down there to make our start on the Two Medicine trail."