We were all hungry when we sat down to eat. The fresh roasted ribs of the elk were juicy and sweet, and with full stomachs we felt sleepy, for the day’s march had been long. We gladly spread our robes and crept into our beds, first covering a coal with ashes for the morning fire.
Next morning we had struck our tent and loaded our dogs before the sun was well up. We took only the tent cover, leaving the poles. Three of our men went ahead to hunt. The rest followed more slowly, not to tire our dogs. Now and then we stopped to rest and eat from our lunch bags. These were of dried buffalo heart skins. Every woman in the party carried one of them tucked under her belt. We had been careful to fill our bags with cooked meat, from our breakfast.
My husband walked at my side if he talked with me. At other times he went a little ahead; for, if enemies or a grizzly attacked us, he would thus be in front, ready to fight, giving me time to escape.
Our trail led along the brow of the bluffs overlooking the Missouri. There was a path here, fairly well marked, made by hunting parties, and perhaps by buffaloes.
Our second camp was at a place called the Slides; for, here, big blocks of earth, softened by the spring rains, sometimes slide down the bank into the river. We found a spring a little way in from the river, with small trees that we could cut for tent poles.
Our tent was hardly pitched when Son-of-a-Star and Scar came in to say they had killed a stray buffalo not far away. They had packed part of the meat to camp on their shoulders, and Son-of-a-Star had cut out the buffalo’s paunch and filled it with fresh blood. While the two hunters went back for the rest of the meat, I put on my copper kettle and made blood pudding. It was hot and ready to serve by the time they came back. I had stirred the pudding with a green chokecherry stick, giving it a pleasant, cherry flavor.
We were a jolly party as we sat around the evening fire. The hot pudding felt good in our stomachs, after the long march. My good dogs, Knife-Carrier, Took-a-Scalp, and Packs-a-Babe, I had fed with scraps of meat from the dead buffalo, and they were dozing outside, snuggled against the tent to keep warm. Okeemeea,[25] Crow-Flies-High’s wife, fetched in some dry wood, which she put on the fire. A yellow blaze lit up the tent and a column of thin, blue smoke rose upward to the smoke hole.
[25] O kēē mēē´ ä