Chapter XXII: The Painted Buffalo Skull

The life of the three boys in their lonely cabin in the hills settled down to a regular routine. Louis and Neil were out every day hunting and visiting their traps, but it was nearly a week before Walter’s lameness wore off so that he could tramp and climb with his comrades. The skin peeled from his frosted cheek, leaving it so tender that he had to keep it covered with his capote hood when out in the cold.

The cabin was in need of furniture. Besides the bed frames, Louis and his companion of the winter before had made two rough stools, but one had been burned. Before he was able to hunt, the Swiss boy, who was handy at wood working, fashioned two more stools. His only tools were an ax, a small saw, and a knife, but the stools were strong and solid, if not ornamental. A table the lads did not miss. At meal times they sat before the fire, their plates on their knees, their cups on the earth floor beside them, the cooking utensils on the hearth.

The first day that Walter went any distance from camp, he and Louis, entering a partly wooded hollow among the hills, came suddenly upon a herd of six or eight large, handsome deer. It was the first time Walter had ever seen wapiti or elk. He was surprised and excited, the trigger of his flintlock trade gun pulled hard, and his shot went wide. Louis, cooler and more experienced, fired just as the herd took fright at the report of Walter’s gun. A yearling buck fell, and he was jubilant at his happy shot. The pemmican was almost gone, and the boys had been living on hares and squirrels. Frozen and hung in a tree out of reach of the dogs, the elk meat would keep until every eatable scrap had been consumed.

It proved lucky for the lads that they had such a good supply of fresh meat. That night a storm commenced that lasted more than three days. It was worse than the blizzard they had encountered on their way to the hills. Even in the sheltered spot where the cabin stood the wind howled and shrieked through the trees, bending them low and beating and crashing the leafless limbs against one another. It threatened to blow the roof off, and whirled the snow in among the trees, to drift it high against the windward side of the house.

Any attempt to reach the trap lines would have been the wildest folly. Neil tried once to go to the near-by creek for water, but the storm drove him back. He decided that snow water was quite good enough for him. When the supply of fuel ran low, a tree close to the lee side of the house was felled. Cutting it up was a troublesome and strenuous task even in the shelter of the cabin.

While the wood pile was being replenished, the elk carcass was blown from the tree where it hung. It was brought inside. The corner farthest from the fire proved quite cold enough to keep the meat fresh. The dogs whined and scratched at the door, but Louis let in Askimé only. He knew it would be almost impossible to prevent the beasts from getting at the venison, if all three were admitted. On the sheltered side of the house, buried deep in the snow, the thick-haired dogs would not freeze.

Preparing the pelts occupied part of the boys’ time. At this task Louis was expert and Neil not unskilled. The work did not appeal to Walter, though he was ready to lend a hand when necessary. He had not been brought up to the fur trade, and he had already concluded that he had no wish to be a trapper. He was willing enough to hunt, especially when food was needed, but traps seemed to him mere instruments of torture. He said nothing to his comrades of this feeling. Their training and way of looking at life were in many ways different from his. But he was resolved to find some other way of making a living in this new land. He was willing to do farming, tinkering, repair work, even to act as a voyageur for the Company.

When time began to hang heavy on the boys’ hands, Walter suggested that Neil give him some lessons in English. They had no paper, pens, or pencils. With a charred stick Neil wrote on the flat hearth stone such common English words as he knew, explaining the meaning. His father had taught him to read and write a little English,—as much as he knew himself,—but Neil’s education was very limited, his spelling erratic, and his pronunciation that of the Highland Scot. Louis watched and listened with keen interest. He had even less education than the Scotch boy. Louis could read only enough to make out the markings on bales of goods and pelts. His writing consisted in copying those marks and signing his name.

When Walter had written his letters to the Periers and had read theirs aloud, Louis had admired and envied his knowledge. Noticing the Canadian boy’s interest in the lessons, Walter offered to teach him to read his native tongue, French. Among the Swiss lad’s few possessions was a small Bible that had belonged to his mother, the only thing he owned that had been hers. He had always carried it about with him, and now he used it as a text-book. Louis entered into the new task with enthusiasm and surprised Walter by learning rapidly. In fact Louis proved quicker than Neil, whose restless nature disinclined him to study of any kind. In physical activity the Highland boy delighted, but working his mind bored and wearied him. Louis, however, grew so interested that even after the storm was over, he spent a part of every evening in a reading lesson by firelight.

A period of clear, cold weather followed the blizzard. There was little wind, but more than once the stillness of the night was shattered by a sharp crack, almost like the report of a musket, when, in the intense cold, some near-by tree split from freezing. In hunting and visiting the traps the boys felt the cold far less than at a higher temperature with wind. Fingers and faces became frost-bitten quickly though, and Walter had to be careful of his frosted cheek.

Following the trap lines necessitated long tramps, sometimes of twelve or fifteen miles, through the hills. Accompanying his comrades, Walter learned something of the lay of the land. He found that the cabin was located on what Louis called “the first mountain,” a rough and partly wooded plateau that rises rather abruptly from the prairie of the Red River valley; which is really not a valley but a plain. This hilly plateau is about eight miles across its widest part, and reaches its greatest height a mile south of where the Pembina River cuts a deep valley through it. On the west of the plateau is the “second mountain,” an irregular ridge. Though the second mountain rises nowhere more than five hundred feet above the first, it is wild and rugged. Walter was forced to admit that in some places, especially where the streams that crossed it had eroded steep-walled ravines, three or four hundred feet deep, it was almost mountain-like on a small scale. To a mountain-bred boy this was mere hill country, but he felt more at home in it than he had felt anywhere since coming to the strange new world. Climbing was a real joy to him, and he loved to choose the steepest rather than the easiest routes.

As game grew scarce in the vicinity of the cabin, the boys pushed their trap lines farther and farther into the hills, until whoever made the rounds was forced to be away at least two, and sometimes three, nights. They built two overnight shelters, one a lean-to against an abrupt cliff, the other a roof of poles over a snug hollow in the rocks. In one of these lodges Louis or Neil, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Walter, would spend the night; with a blazing fire at the entrance to keep away wolves and wildcats.

For several weeks a thievish wolverine annoyed the trappers. The clever, bloodthirsty beast followed the trails, broke into deadfalls, and skilfully extracted the catch from traps and snares. What it could not devour it carried away and hid, after mangling the creature until the pelt was ruined. Louis swore vengeance on the thief, and tried in every way to trap it. At last, by going out at night to follow the wolverine’s fresh track against the wind, he came upon the greedy beast in the act of breaking into a deadfall from the rear. A quick and lucky shot, and Louis triumphantly carried home the robber. Walter had never seen a wolverine, and Neil knew it from its tracks and skin only. With its long body, short, strong legs, and big feet armed with sharp, curved claws, it looked a most formidable creature for its size.

February was a stormy month, until near the close, when there came another period of clear, calm cold. In this fine weather Louis laid a new trap line extending seven miles or more north to _Tête de Boeuf_, Buffalo Head, one of the highest points in the range. After accompanying his friend over the new trail, Walter climbed Buffalo Head for the first time one bright, windless noonday. He found the view from the top impressive, but the name puzzled him.

“Why do you call this hill Tête de Boeuf?” he asked his companion. “I can’t see that it is shaped like a bull’s head, looked at from below or from up here.”

“No,” Louis replied. “I think the name does not come from the shape of the hill, but from a curious custom of the Indians. Do you see those red things over there?”

He pointed to an irregular line of objects in an exposed, wind-blown spot at the very rim of an escarpment.

“Those queer looking stones? They look as if someone had laid them there in a row, and then daubed them with red paint. Did the Indians put them there? What for?”

“You think they are stones? Go and look at them,” returned Louis with a smile.

Walter walked to the edge of the bluff, looked down at the objects, and exclaimed in astonishment, “They’re skulls; skulls of some big animal.”

“Buffalo,” said Louis. “To the Assiniboins and the Sioux this mountain is sacred. They bring buffalo skulls, daub them with red earth, and place them as you see, noses pointing to the east. The skulls are offerings to some heathen god. There is another spot up here where the Indians burn tobacco as a sacrifice.” He stooped to examine one of the skulls. “This one has not been here long. See how fresh the paint is. It is trader’s vermilion mixed with grease.”

“That skull was put there since the last storm,” Walter agreed. “There are little drifts of snow against the others, but hardly any around that one.”

Louis had turned his attention to a shallow, snow-filled hollow in the rock. “Here are tracks. Truly someone has been here since the last snowfall.”

Although the weather had been unusually calm for several days, every breath of breeze swept the exposed spot. The prints in the snow were partly obliterated. If the boys had not found the freshly painted skull, they would scarcely have guessed that the tracks were those of men. With some difficulty they traced the footprints to the edge of a steep, bare, rock slope. There they lost the trail. They were out after game and did not care to waste time tracing a couple of wandering Indians, so they gave up the search.

Nevertheless the recent offering of a buffalo skull on _Tête de Boeuf_ aroused the lads’ curiosity, and set them wondering if there might be Indians camped somewhere in the neighborhood. In all their wanderings heretofore the three had seen no recent sign of human beings.

“We must keep a better watch of our things,” Louis decided, as he sat by the fire that evening preparing the pelt of a red fox. “The Assiniboins are great thieves. Stealing horses is a feat they are proud of. We have no horses, but we do not want to lose our dogs.”

“Or our sled and blankets and all our furs,” Neil added. “One of us must stay home after this to look after things.”

“Yes.” Louis was silent for a moment considering. “I think,” he said at last, “that you and I, Walter, will try to follow that trail to-morrow. It may lead to some camp. Neil will stay here to guard the cabin.”

“Why not let Walter stay?” demanded the Scotch boy, who preferred a more active part.

“Because he cannot talk to the savages or understand them, if any come this way. He knows no Assiniboin.”

“I don’t know much myself,” Neil protested.

“But you know a little, and you have dealt with Indians. He has not. He does not even understand their sign language.”

Neil could find no answer to that argument. He was forced to consent to the arrangement, though he was far from pleased.