第31章

"Then Marpeetopah (Four-skies)took up his bow and arrows and began to straighten and dry them for the next day's hunt,talking and laugh-ing meanwhile.Suddenly he turned and sent an arrow upward,killing the Ojibway,who fell dead at their door.

"'Quick,Wadutah!'he exclaimed;'you must hurry home upon our trail.I will stay here.When this scout does not return,the war-party may come in a body or send another scout.

If only one comes,I can soon dispatch him and then I will follow you.If I do not do that,they will overtake us in our flight.'

"Wadutah (Scarlet)protested and begged to be allowed to stay with her husband,but at last she came away to get reinforcements.

"Then Marpeetopah (Four-skies)put more sticks on the fire so that the teepee might be bright-ly lit and show him the way.He then took the scalp of the enemy and proceeded on his track,until he came to the upturned root of a great tree.

There he spread out his arrows and laid out his tomahawk.

"Soon two more scouts were sent by the Ojib-way war-party to see what was the trouble and why the first one failed to come back.He heard them as they approached.They were on snow-shoes.When they came close to him,he shot an arrow into the foremost.As for the other,in his effort to turn quickly his snow-shoes stuck in the deep snow and detained him,so Marpeetopah killed them both.

"Quickly he took the scalps and followed Wa-dutah.He ran hard.But the Ojibways sus-pected something wrong and came to the lonely teepee,to find all their scouts had been killed.

They followed the path of Marpeetopah and Wa-dutah to the main village,and there a great battle was fought on the ice.Many were killed on both sides.It was after this that the Sioux moved to the Mississippi river."I was sleepy by this time and I rolled myself up in my buffalo robe and fell asleep.

II:Adventures of My Uncle IT was a beautiful fall day--'a gopher's last look back,'as we used to say of the last warm days of the late autumn.We were encamped beside a wild rice lake,where two months before we had harvested our watery fields of grain,and where we had now returned for the duck-hunting.

All was well with us.Ducks were killed in count-less numbers,and in the evenings the men hunted deer in canoes by torchlight along the shores of the lake.But alas!life is made up of good times and bad times,and it is when we are perfectly happy that we should expect some overwhelming misfortune.

"So it was that upon this peaceful and still morn-ing,all of a sudden a harsh and terrible war-cry was heard!Your father was then quite a young man,and a very ambitious warrior,so that I was always frightened on his account whenever there was a chance of fighting.But I did not think of your uncle,Mysterious Medicine,for he was not over fifteen at the time;besides,he had never shown any taste for the field.

"Our camp was thrown into great excitement;

And as the warriors advanced to meet the enemy,I was almost overcome by the sight of your uncle among them!It was of no use for me to call him back--I think I prayed in that moment to the Great Mystery to bring my boy safely home.

"I shall never forget,as long as I live,the events of that day.Many brave men were killed;among them two of your uncle's intimate friends.

But when the battle was over,my boy came back;only his face was blackened in mourning for his friends,and he bore several wounds in his body.

I knew that he had proved himself a true warrior.

"This was the beginning of your uncle's career,He has surpassed your father and your grand-father;yes,all his ancestors except Jingling Thun-der,in daring and skill."

Such was my grandmother's account of the maiden battle of her third son,Mysterious Med-icine.He achieved many other names;among them Big Hunter,Long Rifle and White Foot-print.He had a favorite Kentucky rifle which he carried for many years.The stock was several times broken,but he always made another.With this gun he excelled most of his contemporaries in accuracy of aim.He used to call the weapon Ishtahbopopa--a literal translation would be "Pops-the-eye."My uncle,who was a father to me for ten years of my life,was almost a giant in his propor-tions,very symmetrical and "straight as an arrow."His face was not at all handsome.He had very quiet and reserved manners and was a man of action rather than of unnecessary words.Behind the veil of Indian reticence he had an inexhausti-ble fund of wit and humor;but this part of his character only appeared before his family and very intimate friends.Few men know nature more thoroughly than he.Nothing irritated him more than to hear some natural fact misrepresented.Ihave often thought that with education he might have made a Darwin or an Agassiz.

He was always modest and unconscious of self in relating his adventures."I have often been forced to realize my danger,"he used to say,"but not in such a way as to overwhelm me.Only twice in my life have I been really frightened,and for an instant lost my presence of mind.

"Once I was in full pursuit of a large buck deer that I had wounded.It was winter,and there was a very heavy fall of fresh snow upon the ground.All at once I came upon the body of the deer lying dead on the snow.I began to make a hasty examination,but before I had made any discoveries,I spied the tips of two ears peep-ing just above the surface of the snow about twenty feet from me.I made a feint of not see-ing anything at all,but moved quickly in the direction of my gun,which was leaning against a tree.Feeling,somehow,that I was about to be taken advantage of,I snatched at the same mo-ment my knife from my belt.

"The panther (for such it was)made a sudden and desperate spring.I tried to dodge,but he was too quick for me.He caught me by the shoulder with his great paw,and threw me down.

Somehow,he did not retain his hold,but made an-other leap and again concealed himself in the snow.

Evidently he was preparing to make a fresh attack.