Old Indian trails

by Walter McClintock

After we had finished with the hay of the scout, Yellow Bird and I went to their ranch to help with their crops. The girls cooked and gave us good food, fresh vegetables from their garden, beef, bread and butter and milk.

Many years have passed, but they have not dimmed the memory of those happy days without a care in the world, the primitive simplicity of that family, and the way they made me one of them. We both enjoyed our work, we were near the girls from morning till night, and that kept us in a good humor.

Then the scout wanted timber from the mountains, so we took two teams and made ready the wagons. We threw off their beds and placed the wheels far apart by means of a long reach, to hold the heavy logs. Yellow Bird drove one wagon and I the other. For me it was a new thing to drive a team of broncos. I sat on the reach, on a gunnysack stuffed with hay. I had to wield a whip with a long lash, and had a heavy chain for binding the logs together.

We left the ranch soon after sunrise and went to a burned stretch of timber on a slope of the Rockies. We felled only [[27]]trees that were sound and well-seasoned, cutting them into logs and snaking them down the forest trails to be loaded on our wagons.

At first it was hard to chop hour after hour with an axe. I blistered my hands and was drenched with sweat; my arms and back ached; I felt weak in the knees and had a consuming thirst. Then I became accustomed to the work and had a feeling of exhilaration. I liked the fresh odor of the wood, the ring of my axe and the feeling of a good stroke, to know my sharp blade was cutting deep.

There was always danger of being cut with an axe, from felling trees that had lodged, and from Yellow Bird; sometimes his trees fell perilously near. Once I was nearly struck by a pine that let go at the roots; I heard a sharp crackling, saw it coming towards me and jumped just in time.

But for me the hardest work was the loading of the wagons. The heavy logs were twenty-five feet long and from one to two feet in diameter. The roads were steep and rough and our brakes would not hold. But we always joked about hard work and danger, and had to look out for ourselves.

Soon Yellow Bird tired of ranch work and wanted a change. He proposed that we ride across the Montana line into Canada, to visit relatives in a camp of Blood Indians, a northern division of the tribe. So we rounded up the wild herd of range horses and drove them into the corral. We each chose a saddle horse, Yellow Bird a brown with silvery mane and tail, I a powerful sorrel. My gentle horse, Kutenai, I left to graze at the ranch.

In handling horses that ran wild on the range, we were always ready for trouble. To control them was a question of mastery; they took kind treatment as a sign of weakness. When I tried to saddle my sorrel, he rose on his hind legs and [[28]]with forefeet high in the air tried to bring them down on my head. In mounting, I held his bit in one hand, the pommel with the other, and made a flying leap upon his back. Before I was in the saddle, he sprang forward like a race horse at a desperate gallop. He had an easy motion and I kept my seat; but to stop him baffled all of my endeavors.

We went north across the open plains, without fences or roads to bar the way. Our horses ran like the wind; we gave them free rein and held on. I rode Indian fashion, letting myself go freely with the motion of my horse and kept a firm grip with my knees.