It is fitting that I pause here to pay tribute to one of those little borderlets mentioned in the opening paragraph. Resplendent in its lofty setting that little borderlet, and its kind, possessed priceless properties. Henceforth it becomes golden thread in the woof and warp of this tale. As with the lovely Claudette Colbert and her coca-cola tidings, this is, in a manner, “the pause that refreshes.” And so being, it is with memorable pleasure that I now salute the sumac! It was my father’s salvation.
Back in the Wolfley timber, my father told the Indian the owner did not permit hunting on his premises—that he, the tanner, was not interested in the squirrel.
“Me shoot ‘im,” said the Indian. The long barrel of his rifle pointed upwards—a sharp crack, and the squirrel fell the ground, shot through the head. The Indian picked up the squirrel, and then holding it out to the frightened little boy, said, “Take.”
Without more ceremony the Indian rode away. He was gone only a few minutes. When he returned he was holding in his hand a branch of sumac. “Sequaw,” he said again. There were but a few belated red leaves clinging to the stem. “Catchum ‘fore go red,” he offered when he saw the leaves shattering in my father’s hands.
The Indian’s sharp eyes surveyed the black oak again. He looked at the branch of sumac, saying “Makum buck-kin.” He hesitated. Then said, “Maybe killum deer ‘fore Sun go way. Maybe two suns. You seeum deer?”
My father told the Indian—whom he then and there named Eagle Eye—that he had not seen the deer which those redmen were trailing. Those Indians who had remained in the background were trying to conceal a deer which one of them had swung across his pony as they went into that huddle.
The deer, more numerous in earlier days, had been pretty well killed out by this time. Though, as late as 1880, I, myself, shot a deer on that same run. Also I recall having seen one band of antelope, that fleet-footed little animal of deer family which could outrun the wind even in its then unhampered sweep across the prairies. I was too young to identify the little ruminants, but my father said they were antelope, and he was a hunter of the Daniel Boone type—in fact had hunted in Dan’s old territory, and he knew his game.
Here I will say the Indian, Na-che-seah, was the leader of that hunting party. He was tall, lithe, and straight as an arrow. In later years, with generous expansion of body, he was known as Big Simon. He died May 27, 1934. As I looked upon the still form of this good Indian, in his wigwam, on the day of the funeral, my mind drifted back across the years to the time of our first meeting—but instead of fear, it was now reverence that gripped me. Big Simon was a man of authority among the Indians for a great many years—though, contrary to newspaper reports, he was never chief. About his age, Big Simon would say, “Hundred years, maybe. Don’t know.” With the passing of Big Simon, Commodore Cat is the sole surviving member of the old, old tribe. He too may have been one of those blanketed redmen back there on that deer trail six decades ago.
The redman’s medicine was an invigorating tonic for my father’s frayed spirits. It seemed like God had sent that Indian just at the psychological moment — when my father’s depressed spirits needed bolstering so very much, when an anodyne for his ills was to be had by the blending of two agencies for making leather. Though he had never up to this time regarded it as a commercial agency, my father knew of course that sumac contained tannin. If the Indians could tan their deerskins with it, he reasoned, why couldn’t he mix it with oak bark and tan his calfskins?
I shall always believe that it was something more than blind chance that brought the paths of white man and red man together at that particular spot. Undoubtedly, the Great Spirit was in control. The movements of the Indians up to that time were of course dark, but timed just right. And praise be, there were Indians—amongst them an Indian like Eagle Eye, who could make himself understood. The big break for my father was in the sumac patch close at hand.