The Great Sioux Trail: A Story of Mountain and Plain

by Joseph A. Altsheler

But the great pack, evidently driven by the fiercest hunger, did not give way for bullet or arrows. Huge slavering beasts, they pressed on continually. Two or three of the older men were pulled down and devoured before the very eyes of the people, and Will, who was rapidly shooting away his last arrows, felt himself seized by an immense horror. If the savage brutes should break through their line they would all be killed and eaten. Save for a rifle or two, time had turned back ten or twenty thousand years, when men fought continually with the great flesh-eaters for a place on earth.

Seized by an idea, he rushed to the center of the village where a great fire was burning, and snatched up a torch, calling to others to do likewise. It was the old squaws who were the quickest witted and they obeyed him at once. Twenty women held aloft the flaming wood, and they rushed directly in the faces of the wolves, which gave back as they had not given back before either rifle or arrow. Then the arrows sang in swarms, and the pack, fierce though its hunger might be, was unable to withstand more and fled.

Xingudan urged forward a pursuit. Will had exhausted his arrows, but an old warrior loaned him a long lance, and with it he slew two of the brutes which were now panic stricken. Yet the chief, like a good general, still pressed the fleeing horde, although the wolves turned once and another old man was killed. Inmutanka himself came very near losing his life, as a monster whirled and sprang for him, but Will received the throat of the wolf on the point of the lance, and although he was borne to the earth, the raging brute was killed instantly.

When the wintry dawn came, none of the great pack was left alive near the village. At least half were slain, and the others had scrambled away in some fashion among the mountains.

The village had escaped a great danger, but it rejoiced in victory. The old men, or what was left of them, were buried decently and then there was an immense taking of wolf-skins, the fine pelts of the huge northern beasts, which would long adorn the lodges of the Sioux, and Will again received approval for his quick and timely attack with fire. Xingudan knew in his heart that the village might have been overpowered and devoured had it not been for the wit and courage of Waditaka. But he merely said "Waditaka has done well." Will, however, knew that the four words meant much and that the liberty of the village was his. He was a sharer of all things save one—that, however, being much—namely, the knowledge of their location, which was kept from him as thoroughly as in the beginning.

But for a day or two he did not have much time to think of the question, as the whole village was busily engaged in skinning the slaughtered wolves and dressing the hides. Never before had so many been obtained at once by a single Indian village, and they secured every one, scraping them carefully and then drying them on high platforms or the boughs of trees. Often at night they heard a distant growling and they knew that a few wolves, still hiding in the valley, came out at night to devour the bodies of their dead comrades.

Will, lying between the furs in the strong lodge, would hear sometimes the sound of these faint growls, but they troubled him not at all. He would draw the buffalo robes more closely about him, as the child in the farmhouse pulls up the covers when he hears the patter of rain on the roof, and feels an immense sense of comfort. The compulsion of the life he was leading was fast sending him back to the primitive. He would have read had there been anything to read, but, despite the limited world of the valley in which he now lived, his daily activities were very great.

There was the pony herd, of which he was the chief guardian. Food must be found for it, though the hardy animals could and did do a great deal for themselves under the most adverse conditions. They ate twigs, they dug under the snow with their sharp hoofs for grass that yet lived in sheltered nooks, and Will and the Indians, by persistent seeking, were able to add to their supplies. They also had to break the ice on the river that they might drink, and, under the severe and continuous cold, the ice was now a foot thick.

Will also helped with the fishing through holes in the ice, and acquired all the Indian skill. The fish formed a most welcome addition to their diet of dried meat and the occasional bread made from Indian corn. He helped, too, with the continual strengthening of the lodges, because all the old Indians foresaw the fiercest winter in a generation.

As Will reverted farther and farther into the primitive he retained a virtue which is the product of civilization. He was respectful and helpful to the very old and weak. The percentage of such in the village was much larger than usual, as nearly all the warriors had gone to the war. He invariably took food to the weazened old squaws and the decrepit old men, who presented him with another suit of beautifully decorated deerskin, and a coat of the softest and finest buffalo robe that he had ever seen.