The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
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but had time to skin only one goat before dark; it was slow work with our obsidian knives. As we could not safely leave the others unprotected from the prowlers during the night, we laid them side by side on a heap of balsam boughs, where the air could circulate all round them, and Pitamakan hung his capote on a stick right over them, in order that the sight and odor of it might prevent any wandering lion, lynx, or wolverene from robbing us. To go without his capote in such cold weather was certainly a sacrifice on Pitamakan's part.
If I am asked why we took pains to lay the game on boughs, the answer is that, although any one would think that snow would be a natural refrigerator, the opposite is the case, for freshly killed animals will spoil in a few hours if they are buried in it.
To keep from freezing, Pitamakan hurried on to camp, while I followed slowly with the goatskin and head. There was not time to take the lion or marten from the deadfalls.
When I got to the lodge, Pitamakan had a fire burning and the last of the cow elk ribs roasting over it. We were wet to the skin, of course, but that did not matter. Off came our few garments, to be hung a short time over the fire and then put on again. How cheerful and restful it was to stretch out on our balsam beds and enjoy the heat after the long day's battle with snow and precipitous mountain-sides!
The next day, and for many days thereafter, we had much work to keep us busy. We skinned the goats, tanned the hides into soft robes, and sewed them together in the form of a big bag, with the fur side in. The night on which we crawled into it for the first time was a great occasion. On that night, for the very first time since leaving the Blackfoot camp, we slept perfectly warm and without waking with shivers to rebuild the fire.
The deadfalls also took a great deal of our time. Every night some of them were sprung, and we found from one to three or four valuable fur animals under the drop-bars. It was a tedious job to skin them and properly stretch the pelts to dry, but for all that, we loved the work and were proud of the result. Here and there in the lodge a few marten, fisher, wolverene, and lynx skins were always drying, and in a corner the pile of cured peltries was steadily growing. Three of them were of mountain lions.
During this time much more snow fell; it was fully six feet deep in the woods when the last of the elk hams was broiled and eaten. For a day or two we subsisted on goat meat, although the best of it had a slight musky odor and flavor. As Pitamakan said, it was not real food.
As our bows were not nearly so strong as they looked, my partner was always wishing for glue, so that we might back them with sinew. There was material enough for glue, but there was nothing to make it in.
"The Mandans made pots of earth," I said to him one day. "Perhaps we can make one that will stand fire and water."
Out we went along the river to look for clay. At the first cut-bank that we came to I gouged off the snow that thinly coated its perpendicular side, and lo! there was a layer of clay six inches thick between two layers of gravel. We broke out several large flat chunks of the stuff,—it was frozen, of course,—and carried it to the lodge. There, breaking it into fine pieces and thawing it, we added a small amount of water, and worked it into a stiff paste of the right consistency, as we thought, for moulding.
Pitamakan, always artistic, fashioned a thin bowl like those that he had seen in the Mandan village, while I made mine an inch thick, with a capacity of not more than two quarts. When we baked them in the coals, mine cracked, and Pitamakan's fell to pieces.
That was discouraging; evidently the clay was not of the right consistency. I worked up another portion of clay with less water, while my partner added even more water than before to his batch. We each soon had a bowl fashioned and put to bake. In a few minutes the one which Pitamakan had made fell to pieces, but mine, which was thick and clumsy in shape, seemed to stand the heat well. I gradually increased the fire round it, and after keeping the blaze up for a long time, I allowed the fire at last to die out gradually. The bowl turned out fairly well; for although it had one crack in the side, it was dark red in color, and gave a substantial ring when we tapped it with a stick.
However, we took no chances of a mishap by moving it. We plastered the crack with fresh clay, and then, putting into it nearly a quart of water, an elk hoof and a couple of goat hoofs, we rebuilt the fire just close enough to make the mixture simmer, and adding more water from time to time during the day, patiently awaited results.
"Ai-y! It is real glue!" Pitamakan exclaimed that evening, after dipping a stick in the mess and testing it with his fingers. We were quite excited and proud of our success. Softening the four elk sinews in the hot glue, Pitamakan then plastered a pair of them on each bow. The place where the ends overlapped at the centre, he bound with a sinew wrapping.
Of course the bows were unstrung when the backing was put on, and as soon as the work was done, we laid them away from the fire, that they might dry slowly. In the morning, the first thing, after crawling out of our fur nest, we strung and tested them, and found that the backing had more than doubled their strength and elasticity. Now we were ready to hunt our winter meat, and after a hurried breakfast of musky goat steak, we started in quest of the game.
Not since the day of the goat hunt had we seen any tracks of moose, elk, or deer. Pitamakan said that he had heard that the deer went from the high mountains down toward the lake of the Flatheads to winter, and that we need not expect to see any more of them. But he added that it did not matter, for other game would yard close round the lodge.
Taking a zigzag course and examining every red willow patch along our route, we went down the valley. As it was a stinging cold day, we had our hands tucked up in the sleeves of our capotes, and our bows and arrows under our arms, for as yet we had no mittens. Our legs suffered, too, from need of new coverings.
The first game that we saw was an otter, fishing in a dark pool at the foot of a rapid. He would crawl out on the ice fringing it, sit still for a moment, sniffing the air and looking sharp for any enemy, and then make a sudden dive. We watched him until he had brought up a big trout and had begun to eat it, when we turned away without the animal seeing us. Except at close range, the otter's eyesight is poor, but he has a keen nose and sharp ears. Later we intended to set a deadfall for him, if by any means we could catch fish to bait it.
A mile or more below the lodge we came to a deep, hard-packed trail, which wound and branched in every direction through a big red-willow thicket, which we guessed to be a moose yard. In many places the willows had been browsed off as far out from the paths as the animals could stretch their necks. Here and there were large, hard-packed circular depressions in the snow where they had lain down to rest and sleep, always, I imagine, with one of their number on the watch for any prowling mountain lion.
We went down through the centre of the yard, although we had some difficulty in crossing the deep trails on our snowshoes. Soon we sighted the game—two cow moose, two calves, and two yearlings. The instant that they saw us the old lead cow trotted away down the trail, leading the others, and then by turning into every successive left-hand fork, tried to circle round behind us. When we headed her off, she turned and tried to circle round us in the other direction. Then Pitamakan and I separated, and in that way drove the little band steadily ahead of us, until it reached the lower end of the yard.
There, with a tremendous leap, the old cow broke out of the yard into the fresh snow, and the way she made it fly behind her reminded me of the stern wheel of a Missouri River steamboat beating up spray. All the others followed her until we came close, when all but her calf wheeled in the new path and rushed back for the yard.
They were so close to us that we might almost have touched them. Pitamakan shot an arrow deep between the ribs of the cow, and by a lucky aim I put my one arrow into the calf behind her. Both of them fell, but the two yearlings, scrambling over their bodies, escaped into the yard.
We went on in pursuit of the other cow and her calf. The strength that she displayed in breaking her way through six feet of snow was wonderful. For at least three hundred yards she went faster than we could go on our web shoes, but after that she gave out rapidly, and finally stopped altogether.
When we came close to her, she plunged back past the calf and stood awaiting us, determined to protect it to the last. All the hair on her shoulders