Chapter IX: The Striking of the Camp

So far back as the year 1813, Hugh Monroe had been apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company, and posted to a fort at the headwaters of the Saskatchewan. The three tribes of the Blackfoot nation, the Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, brought their trade to that post, where the trader in charge had misgivings, lest presently they be misled into dealing with the Americans, whose hearts were bad and their goods inferior. So, one of the three tribes being at the fort, the trader detailed young Monroe to join them, travel and live with the people, win their confidence, and steer them judiciously lest evil communications of the American Fur Company corrupt the good manners of the Blackfoot nation.

A few days out on the trail southward the chiefs, with whom young Monroe was riding, came in an afternoon to the brow of the prairie, overlooking a meadow where the tribal camp would be pitched for the night halt. They dismounted to sit on the hill, watching the procession file past, and one of the chiefs had trouble with flint, steel, and tinder, kindling a pipe which would not light.

The lad took the pipe, and held a burning-glass in focus until the tobacco kindled. Not perceiving the lens, but supposing that the Stoneheart had the direct aid of their Sun God, the chiefs hailed the event as a miracle, and Hugh Monroe as a great medicine man. He was given a name of honor--Rising Wolf. Long afterwards, though hand mirrors came into general use for signaling, and the burning-glass for kindling a camp fire, this Rising Wolf's reputed sun power, which was really common sense, continued to give his voice weight in the Blackfoot Council. As time went by he married into the tribe, became the father of a family, and continued among the people, for a matter of sixty years. He was eighty-five years old when his life ended, and in his memory one of the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains is named Mount Rising Wolf.

It would be difficult to find a criticism of the holy lodge more sane, temperate, and impartial than that of the gentle adventurer. Without the slightest doubt as to their power, he spoke of the seers as cranks. "Seems to me," he said in after-years, "the offense of a crank is not that he is right, but that his rectitude puts other folk in the wrong. And as cranks, the seers were so damned aggravating."

Thus one may be a vegetarian without malice, in so far as one is opposed on principle to uric acid in the blood. Or one may prefer, quite reasonably, the gift of vision to the juiciest buffalo steak. There is no harm in claiming merit for a meatless diet approved by sound physicians on the one part, by mystics on the other. Offense only begins when one calls one's friends foul feeders even as pigs and dogs, or taunts the neighbors with the suggestion that eaters of rabbits are quite capable of devouring the baby. An enthusiast without the restraint of common sense or the slightest fear of consequences, Rain commended the vegetarian tenets to Red Indians who must train themselves in hunting, live by the chase, and migrate with the game on pain of being starved in peace, or rudely scalped in war. So much said Rising Wolf outright, but the priestess, very calm and aloof, observed that he was quite ignorant without being at all clever. Yet the adventurer knew, as Rain did not, how lewd, frivolous young savages in the camps make no end of fun out of the vegetarian doctrine, while Many Horses and other chiefs used to say that the sacred woman was becoming a holy nuisance.

If Rain led, Storm was a close follower. Having sacrificed his gun, and afterwards his wife's bow and arrows to the Sun Spirit, he began to observe that the vicinity of the holy lodge was looked upon by the birds and the beasts as a sanctuary. He loved them. They trusted him. They let him witness all sorts of their affairs, and their ceremonies, such as the small bird's jig in lugging the rest of a worm out of the ground, or the bear's height mark scored on a tree trunk from time to time as he grows, the field mouse dance, or ructions at porcupine lodge. Many animals with a sense of humor would come to hear him sing "Tom Bowling," or, with much gravity and deportment, play at congregation while he preached.

Unhappily there settled in the neighborhood a family of cougars who proceeded, without regard to doctrine or respect for the holy man, to eat their way through his parishioners.

Much prayer guided a very strenuous hunting, until at last, far up in the fells, Storm came one afternoon to the residence of the cougar family; and, firmly resolved to slay the parents, he fell in love with their delightful kittens. The result was a misunderstanding, because the father and mother on their return from hunting supposed Storm to be molesting the babies. Their combined rush felled him. Either of these nine-foot cats could have finished the business, but that the cave was rather small, they got in each other's way, and he found time to draw his hunting knife. The scrimmage was frantic, a whirling fury, so that when at last the man dispatched them both, he fainted from loss of blood.

Rain saw the affair in a vision, and by hard riding reached the scene in time to save her husband from bleeding to death. She loaded him on her pony, got him to camp, and kept him alive by her strong spiritual power; but the wounds, being poisonous, festered. Storm was long in delirium, weak when he rallied, slow in recovery. Afterwards he walked rather lame, and had also a deep scratch which won for him among the Blackfeet the sacred name of Scarface.

So far as critic Rising Wolf, who found Storm an invalid on his second visit, could see, no harm whatever; but presently, when Storm felt well enough, that seer put up crosses, a big one in front of the holy lodge and little ones five miles east and five miles west at the trail side, to mark the limits of sanctuary for all wild creatures. A pilgrim must lay down his arms at the foot of the boundary cross, or was sent back an hour's journey to do so before either Rain or Storm would give an audience.

Ingenious visitors would evade the extra ride by lying; but Storm, who would read their thoughts, would then deny to liars that sanctuary which was freely given to mountain sheep and goats, elk, caribou, deer, the beaver, and the bears.

Now it so happened that Two-shakes, and Worm-in-the-bud, warriors of the Snake tribes, riding on a knight-errantry to this far country, learned by the sign talk from some friendly Crows about this Truce-of-God in the northern mountains. They came afoot over the hills until they looked down into the valley, where they descried two tipis beside the sanctuary cross upon the eastward trail. Quite naturally they mistook this cross for the one which stood before the holy tipi and the guest lodge. They supposed that they would get for a trophy of war Storm's famous golden hair, by long odds the finest scalp in the known world.

Their surprise attack just before dawn of a winter morning was quite a success, for the knights-errant counted coups on the scalps of Four Bears, chief of the East Kutenais, Sings-all-night, the eminent medicine man, his famous medicine pipe, Mrs. Four Bears, whose name was Weeping Tit, Mrs. Sings-all-night, whose name was Back-hair-parted, and her little boy, whose name was Dark-in-places. When day broke it was a bitter disappointment for the Snake braves that Storm's hair was not included in the treasure; but they consoled themselves with two guns, many robes, and a nice bunch of spotted ponies. While they drove long and hard it was their misfortune to leave tracks in the telltale snow, whereby they were traced, overtaken, and captured alive by the East Kutenais, who burned them with much pomp and circumstance at the mouth of Wild Horse Creek.

Afterwards the story ran like fire through the tribes that Four Bears and Sings-all-night had lied to Storm concerning the deposit of their weapons at the east cross, that he refused to receive them as pilgrims and had barred sanctuary. Their fate most terribly enhanced Storm's reputation and made the pilgrims meek.

In modern national parks, where there is truce for the animals, they become self-conscious, show themselves off with ostentation, are disposed as residents to look down upon mere tourists. So, under Storm's protection, did that born _poseur_ the big-horn, that low comedian the bear, and even the porcupine who in the wilds flies for his life from man at a mile an hour. The skunk, of course, has right of way on all trails, so that men, grizzlies, cougars, even the lordly elk must step aside to let his lordship pass disdainfully by; but that all the animals should expect the polecat's honors was gall and wormwood to free-born warriors. When, as critic Rising Wolf mentioned the subject, Storm seemed a little truculent, and said it served them right. "I've been thirty years among 'em," answered Rising Wolf, "but you may know more than I do. I only warn you--don't make enemies for fun."

When Rising Wolf, on first meeting the seers, accused them of avarice, they gave away their ponies, robes, everything they possessed that was worth having. It was typically Indian. A squaw in mourning for an uncle, a cousin, or a brother, without consulting her husband, may present the whole of his property to the poor. Surely nobody could be more generous than that. An Indian gives in a very large-hearted way, and nothing grieves, hurts, or insults him as much as a refusal to accept his present; but the seers, having stripped themselves to bare necessities, would now accept from the pilgrims nothing whatever except a little dried fruit, a few wild vegetables, or a catch of trout. The sick restored to health, the mourners comforted, the men in grave dilemmas shown the way, found all their gifts declined. They were dishonored. Their gratitude turned sour.

All this they would reveal to their tribal medicine men, who earned a living, supporting wives and families on the fees received in their practice. To such professionals, any magician who wrought cures for love was worse than amateurish. He was a menace. Not that the medicine man said anything outright, or exposed himself to a suspicion of jealousy by using such words as unprofessional, cheat, charlatan, black-leg, unorthodox. Only he would hint.

"String halt? Dear, dear! To get as lame as all that the horse must have been on high, rough, broken ground. Been in the mountains lately?"

"So you don't like the weather? Well, well, the Thunder Bird, and the Spirits of the Storm, and the Rain, have a deal to answer for."

"A war party ambushed? Tut, tut, very curious, very odd indeed. Now, if they'd mentioned their plans to a neutral, one who meets the enemy, and tells him about our raids, why, of course, of course! But no! That's quite out of the question. Quite. Odd, though, how many warriors we lose just after they've gone on pilgrimage."

Were the traders overcharging for their goods? "Why, what can you expect? We depart from the faith of our fathers to pick up every wind of heresy which blows about in the mountains, and yet you complain because your medicine goes bad!"

Were there scandals among the women. "Ah! How different in the days of our mothers, when there were no magicians calling up evil spirits!"

"It seems ungracious," said Rising Wolf in after years, recalling old events. "I don't want to set myself up as a critic of saints, for Rain and Storm were saints, and I'm no more than a sinner. Many a time when they would get a meal for the pilgrims, they went hungry themselves because there was nothing left to eat. They'd be up all night with people sick or in trouble. They never showed a sign of peevishness, or said an ill word of anybody. Both of them worked what one has to call miracles. They had far-reaching influence among the tribes, always used for the good of others. There was no trace of sham or trickery, but everything straightforward, unpretentious, real. Rain was really a very beautiful woman, and she would charm a bird off a tree. Storm was good-looking, too, in his way, a matter of coloring with his fierce blue eyes and that gorgeous mane of hair. Of course he had a slight truculence, a bit of defiance about him which choked one off until one knew him better. You know he began as a sailor before the mast, and his people, I take it, were in very humble life; but 'pon my soul he was a damned sight more like some duke. I never met one, but I mean what I think a duke ought to be like, with the grand air, the simple direct manners, the courtesies, the thoughtfulness for everybody which goes only with real thoroughbreds. The pilgrims just worshiped them--at the time; and yet when they went away, out of the glamour so to speak, they'd feel they'd been talked down to, their self-respect bruised, their plumes a little rumpled. There was the bend in the arrow.

"You mark my words. This human species runs in herds. If we forsake the herd life to run apart, we get out of focus like a burning-glass at the wrong distance, we see ourselves in the wrong proportion--not enough world, too much me. When the trouble came, the average human person helped by these big saints wanted to see them taken down a peg or two. Of course the tribes were shocked and all that, but human people rather enjoy a sensation. And if Rain and Storm were so mighty powerful, why didn't they help themselves? After all, it was their business to work wonders."

Rising Wolf paid four visits to the holy lodge, the first to expose fraud, the other times to seek advice in his own troubles. Of wider experience than any Indian, a deeper man than most and very shrewd, he had for thirty years kept almost the whole of the Blackfoot trade in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company; and thanks to him, this nation, for all its alleged ferocity, shed no white man's blood.

"They're gentlefolk," said he, "that's all. One only needs a little tact, and it would take a downright cad to quarrel with such fellows as Many Horses." Indian names wear out, and are discarded about as frequently as we change hats, but among the young bucks of that period were chiefs, now remembered by whites and Indians alike with kindly reverence as Crowfoot, Mad Wolf, and Brings-down-the-sun. In any land or age such men would have been distinguished as very perfect and most gentle knights, but there were hundreds of men worthy to ride with these.

Sooner or later, inevitably as the tide marches from neap to flood, the waves of American settlement must lap the upper plains, and pioneers find their way into the hunting grounds of the Blackfeet. "Kill one," said Rising Wolf to the Council, "and a thousand will come to the funeral."

The first American to secure a foothold among the Blackfeet was the Crow, a mulatto, and according to one version of the story an escaped slave. Other accounts allow for his being part negro, but for the rest a Mexican Indian. Certainly he had a touch of the Spaniard in his manner. He would make a statement, and finish it with a query--"Yes?" "No?" He would commence a sentence in words and end it with a gesture. The fellow passed himself off as an Indian, an authentic Absaroka warrior with three Crow wives and a litter of children; and he was known to the tribes as the Crow. Rising Wolf described him as a big, lusty, hearty, jovial ruffian, lavish with gifts, fond of display, hail-fellow-well-met with the chiefs, a braggart, a monstrous liar, without fear; and, under that surface of him, subtle, sinuous, fork-tongued, secret, deadly.

When Rain advised the chief medicine man of the Absaroka, had she been a little thoughtful of her own benefit, she might have foreseen the calling together of the Absaroka Council, the delivery of her message to the chiefs, and the conveyance of every word with embellishments to the Crow for his information and action. The Blackfoot priestess was not worldly-wise. The Crow was all that. He went to the chiefs in council and called them a pack of fools. "You wanted fire water," said he, "and I delivered the goods. You did not engage me to ruin your enemies the Blackfeet. It would have paid me just as well to ruin them."

They asked him what he meant.

"I am the Devil's merchant," he explained. "The Devil pays me pretty good money for bringing destruction to silly Indian tribes. How much will you pay me to go and ruin the Blackfeet, as I ruined you?"

"If the white man's Devil pays you," asked the chief, "why should we hire you?"

"All right," said the Crow. "I guess I can put up the same goods for your allies, the Snakes. I don't run half the risk there that I would with the Blackfeet."

The head chief lost his temper. "We'll burn this trader's wagons, share his ponies, and put a price on his scalp. Then he can go to the Devil."

"Of course," observed the Crow, "all traders will know how you kept faith with me, and what to expect if they come with trade goods to your camps. May the Blackfeet," he added piously, "drive off the rest of your ponies, scalp the rest of your braves, enslave your women, butcher your children, and blot out your camp fires. They will too. My medicine says they're coming, and your rotten tribes are in poor shape to meet them."

In the end the Absaroka Council hired the Crow to ruin the Blackfeet. Afterwards, he said, he would marry that Blackfoot priestess. Rain should be his squaw.

The Crow bragged of such intentions at Fort Benton, well within earshot of the Blackfoot tribes. His talk was cynical, pungent enough to be repeated, to pass into the general gossip of the Blackfoot country, with comments on Rain's character to spice the scandal, and derision of the old-fashioned Hudson's Bay Company which could hardly fail to reach the ears of Rising Wolf. The Blackfeet were interested, amused, and curious to see this trader who advertised so boldly, who was going to undersell the Company, blacken the face of Rising Wolf, and take Rain the sacred woman down a peg or two. As to their pending ruin, all the surrounding nations would threaten as much or more when the mood took them. Threatened tribes live long.

The Blackfoot nation was blind to any danger. Rising Wolf alone saw the extent and nature of the peril. For once he lost his head. Where tact and humor would have won for him the exclusion of the Crow from the Blackfoot villages, he went raving before the Council, pleading with the Blackfoot chiefs for the mulatto's death. That was a blunder. By seeking the murder of a rival trader he put himself in the wrong, meeting his first rebuff from Many Horses, who told him curtly to do his own killings. To give Rising Wolf justice, he challenged the Crow, a man four times his size, to fight with any weapons--this in presence of the Blackfoot Council. "That's all right," was the Crow's cheery rejoinder. "I reckon I name the weapon--cannon, loaded with buffalo horns!"

The white adventurer failed to meet with jest the gale of laughter which presently drove him out of camp, leaving the Crow in possession. And the Crow was clever, distributing to the Blackfoot chiefs and medicine men gifts of axes and guns, of scarlet cloth and beads, every treasure the heart of man could covet, silks for the women, toys for the children, liquor by the keg. The Crow offered subsidy to every important leader, so long as he traded in safety with the Blackfoot nation. That night he had a wagon load of robes and a tribe drunk.

Instead of reporting his failure to the Hudson's Bay Company, which does not suffer fools gladly, their agent, Rising Wolf, went on his third visit to the holy lodge, and laid the whole of the troubles before the Sacred Woman.

Now did Rain see that her people were doomed to destruction. "My eyes are opened," she said, "and I see all the warrior spirit of our people change to cowardice. O fallen chiefs! O childless mothers, starving lodges, broken tribes driven to beggary. Aye, and the Stonehearts come with their cold charity--all through my fault, my fault!"

"How can that be your fault?" asked Rising Wolf.

The spirit of prophecy forsook her; she was all woman as she answered him.

"I try," she confessed, "to be a Christian, but I'm a little heathen inside. A Christian wouldn't have told the Absaroka Council, as I did, to burn the Crow's wagons, to steal his horses, and take his scalp if he came back again. 'Twas I who had the Crow turned loose to ruin my own dear Blackfeet people. If I wasn't really and truly a Christian I'd paint my face black, cut off one or two fingers, and howl all night. Then Storm would beat me, and it would do me good."

And then she fell to crying.

Rain and Storm had spent the whole of their working years, as well as their arduous dream-life, in practical application of every principle contained in the Sermon on the Mount. So intensely literal were they, that Rain would sometimes devote an hour to slapping her man's face, while he turned one cheek or the other, until his complexion became that of a roast of beef on a spit. Had an eye offended either of them, it would have been plucked out, and that with no hesitation; indeed, they lived ever in fearful hope that they would not be obliged to take offense at the conduct of a leg or an arm. On this occasion the pair of them spent a night fasting in the cold fog on the altar hill, while they tried to forgive the Crow for ruining the Blackfeet; but in the morning they hated him worse than ever. It seemed for the time as though the Sermon on the Mount had failed them.

Urgent, then, was their appeal to Hiawatha as guide, who delivered to them a lecture full of original thought, and high inspiration, beautifully phrased, elusive as a fine, rare melody, difficult to remember, and to all appearance wide of the point.

In meditation they saw great angels and all the Heavens opened, but when they came to earth again they had no practical or direct advice for Rising Wolf. Only they felt with final conviction the irrevocable law which binds us each to live his own life guided by such light as he can find. Storm summed it all up when he rode with Rising Wolf to speed him on his way back to the tribe. "The Blackfeet are a flock of sheep. A wolf has got into the fold. You are the shepherd."

Of Rising Wolf's duel that summer with the Crow there are few particulars remembered now. The fighting seems to have been prolonged, in several successive phases, beginning on horseback with guns at extreme range, and closing on foot with axes. Hand to hand the little adventurer had no chance against a man of longer reach and enormous muscular strength. For weeks afterwards he lay between life and death, during the rest of a year a convalescent nursed by his wife. In the moon of berries 1846, she brought him, an invalid, a shadow of his former self, on his fourth visit to the holy lodge.

"I don't want," he said, "to make things out worse than they are. It's better to keep a cool head, and calculate without losing one's temper. In the first place, the Crow is a pretty good fellow in his way, with a very big heart. He's never been in camp without coming to see me or sending his wives with presents--invalid food that wasn't come by without sending especially to St. Louis. That corn meal helped, and the dressings for my wound. The Crow wants me to chuck the Hudson's Bay Company and come into partnership--can't for the life of him see any difference between our old merchant adventurers trading honest goods and his own horrible poison.

"By the way, it isn't so very poisonous. I tried a drink once, nasty but harmless. It's just neat alcohol, mixed, one part to four in water. He sells a pint mug for one buffalo robe, and doesn't put a thumb inside to shorten the measure. A pint makes an Indian think he's on the Happy Hunting grounds, a second knocks him out, and then--well, a lot of the warriors drop on the way back to their tipis, and in winter they freeze to death. In liquor most of the bucks think they're fierce and dangerous, so that the squaws and the children take to the woods. A few people are killed in the squabbles.

"Then there's a limit. The hunters get so many buffalo, the women dress that many robes, and each pelt fetches one pint. You see, a very few gallons of alcohol buys enough robes to load a prairie schooner; so on the whole the drinking doesn't last long enough to do the men very much harm. They can't get to delirium tremens, as white men do in the settlements.

"The men hunt all the time, instead of taking the war trail. The women have to dress robes instead of curing meat, camas, and berries for the winter. It means that the men get soft. The enemy grows bold and runs our horses with impunity. We're liable to a general massacre, and there's horrible danger of famine. It would make you cry, Rain, to see how poor our people are since the Crow came, to cart away the whole wealth of the Blackfoot nation. He keeps the chiefs rich, while the rest are beggared. That's why some of the women have taken to drink, which isn't good for the children. And some of the men have sold their wives to the Crow. He takes the three tribes by turns. He's with the Piegans now. And Rain, your brother, my dear friend, Heap-of-dogs, is falling under the influence of this devil."

Rain and her man had abandoned all other service in their dream-life, and for a year past had visited the sleep and the meditation of the Blackfeet, prompting them to good thoughts, new resolutions, kindly impulses, helpful deeds, to the overthrow of the trader, even to the rigors of the war trail, the sport of stealing ponies. They had helped Rising Wolf to keep the soul in his body, inspired his flagging courage, prayed earnestly for his welfare and he alone rose clear above temptation. The rest kept their resolves until they tasted liquor. And Rain knew that her own brother had become a drunkard.

"I understand," said Storm, when Rising Wolf had spoken. "The enemy killed my father, hanged my Uncle Joey, damned my Uncle Thomas, and got my mother murdered. Even as you spoke, Rising Wolf, I felt the old craving to get drunk. It's in my blood. It's harder to fight than cougars, but it's got to be faced at last.

"We must go to the Blackfoot nation. We must set up the holy cross in front of this trader's wagon. Nothing except the cross has power to save the people. Besides, there's Heap-of-dogs, your own brother, Rain, my brother, and your chum, eh, Rising Wolf? We must save him."

"You're taking a terrible risk," said Rising Wolf.

"What risk?" asked Rain, bridling at the word.

"Death!" was the answer.

"The Crow," said Storm, "risks more than we do."

"What do you mean?" asked Rising Wolf.

"Hell!" answered Storm--"Hell! If he's brave enough to risk Hell, we're not cowards enough to shirk so little a thing as death."

"We must go," said the priestess. "Yes, we must go. Else must my people perish.

"The lodge poles of our tipi"--Rain looked up at them--"have rooted and sprouted, so that I have to trim the buds off every spring. I thought our roots had struck here, that we should never leave our home. I must cut new poles for our journey."

"Why drag them across the World Spine?" asked Storm. "I'll cut a new set before we come out on the plains, and a cross to set up in front of our lodge door"--he leaned over and clutched his wife's work-worn hands--"to remind us of home," he added, "as well as to save the people."

"I must make a decent frock before we start," said the woman.

Storm laughed, for she had a dozen splendid and unworn dresses in her trunks of arrowproof hide.

"Rags!" she cried. "Rags! I've nothing fit to be seen, and you'll want a pack of moccasins for this trail. Besides, poor Rising Wolf needs a rest before he's fit to travel. And oh! how shall we ever manage with only two pack ponies and the colt? We'll have to load our saddle beasts and walk."

It was ten years now since Storm had entered the wilderness, and seven of these had been spent with his wife in the sweet vale below the Apse of Ice. Their home was very dear to both of them, filled as it was with happy memories. They pretended that they would like to see the world, take part in the stirring affairs of the Blackfoot nation, attend the ceremonies, the buffalo hunting, the gambling at the wheel game, the dancing, and the feasts. That was all make-believe. They perhaps of all mankind were the most widely traveled, for with the clarity of the dream-state they had seen the innermost life of imperial palaces and cities, traveled in regions unexplored, ascended mountains never scaled by climbers, walked the sea floor in groves of living coral, attended armies in battle, passed unharmed through burning forests, earthquake-shattered towns, devastating floods. To them the astral plane was familiar ground with its amazing vistas of past ages from the dawn of Time, its lands of glamour and fairy, its cities and settlements of the "dead" who live. They had been beyond the astral to regions infernal, purgatorial, and spiritual, attending worship at temples eternal in the Heavens where the priests are angels ministrant and the music celestial in chords of living light. "Seeing the world!" With such phrases they consoled one another concerning this journey to a Blackfoot camp with all its people drunk.

"The berries are nearly ripe," said Rain as they struck camp. "I wish we could stay to get our supply for the winter."

The men were loading a pony.

"My wife," Storm said to Rising Wolf, as they balanced the packs on the sling rope, "my woman is still a child--all make-believe, all let's-pretend." He laid the cooking gear between the panniers. "She is not grown up, and never will be."

"I don't follow," objected Rising Wolf. "Of course you'll want a winter store of berries."

They drew the manta, a bed robe, over the horse-load.

"Why, 'of course'?" asked Storm, as he passed the bight of the lash rope, and Rising Wolf hooked on.

"I wouldn't hint such things to my woman," said Rising Wolf reproachfully. "The hook's clear," he added.

Storm made the pony grunt as he set his knee to the pack, and hauled sharp home. Then he crossed the lines.

"If Rain knew the meaning of fear," he said, "I'd keep my mouth shut." He made his basket line, and Rising Wolf, with a foot on the end of the pack, took in all that. He also made his basket line, completing the diamond hitch. He made all fast.

"Rain and I," Storm smiled as he patted the pony on the neck, "are making the big trail, the long trail, the Wolf Trail, climbing the Milky Way, the great white Road of Stars. You"--he looked Rising Wolf in the eyes--"will live to see the plains covered with the white man's buffalo, the free water fenced, the free men like dogs begging for their rations, the women selling themselves to the Stonehearts because their children are hungry. I see vulgar white people tear down the burial scaffolds to rob the bodies of our Indian chiefs. I see them peeping in at the window of your cabin to see the squaw man at dinner, and say 'Now, ain't that jest too quaint!' My friend, you will live until your grandsons ride to the iron road, to see the train, and sell war bonnets whose every feather records a deed of war. Wouldn't you rather ride the Wolf Trail with Rain and Storm?

"The dead, the comforted, are sorry for the mourners who cry in the night outside the desolate lodges."

"Come," said Rain, "you who are speaking in the owl talk, and keep the ponies waiting with their groans all ready for the lash rope."

Rising Wolf's woman laughed heartily as she folded the lodge skin. "Thus," she said, "days fly when Stonehearts talk."

The guest lodge was left standing to shelter travelers; the poles of the holy lodge to grow into a little grove of trees; and Rain laid the ashes from her hearth at the foot of the cross. Her man led her away.

Rising Wolf and his woman had spare ponies for them to ride, driving the small remuda down through the valley. The falling waters called to them through the berry groves, but they dared not look back to where the desolate cross, gray in the dawn light, stood out against the junipers, where the winding trail went up the altar hill, and far above that, the mighty spires of icy rock full in the rose flush of the sunrise pointed to the skies.

"The valley seems full of shadows," said Rising Wolf's woman fearfully. "I'm so frightened."

"It is the valley of the shadow," answered Storm.