JtTLY 10, 1897.J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
23 
SHEEP AND SNOWSHOES— III. 
A winter Hunt on the Summit of the Rockies. 
Al-so-pom-stan. 
On the morning of our first day in camp, while the 
others of us were still curled up in their frost-rimmed 
blankets, 0-to-kd-mi crawled out of his bed and poked his 
head out of the door. 0-to-kd-mi had promised Joe Kipp 
that he would do his best on this hunt. He would go 
through snow "up toJvere," signifying up to his waist. He 
was, as he publicly declared, very "sko6n-a-taps" (strong), 
and he was going to get sheep or get reasons, or words to 
that effect. It is very likely that he was as anxious for 
good hunting as any of the rest of us, as this early prospect- 
ing on his part would seem to betoken. But when 0-to- 
ko-mi poked his head out through the lod^e flap he with- 
drew it again with a single exclamation which covered the 
case very fully. "Ai-so-pom-stan!" said 0-to-kd-mi. By 
which he signified that, to his disgust, the big cow moose 
was again at her regular task of waving her ears and mak- 
ing the wind blow. 
When we turned out of the lodge that morning the pros- 
pect was alike a brilliant and a gloomy one. Back of us 
the sharp sun was shining and all was a blinding sea of 
white. Ahead of us, up in the mountains where we 
wanted to hunt, there were black masses of storm clouds 
running, alternated with great flying wreaths of driven 
white mist. From Eising Wolf Mountain to his mate 
across the valley there reached, in the glinting, glittering, 
unspeakably brilliant snow mist, a vast, magnificent bow 
of all the colors, as rare and strangely beautiful sight as 
may come into many lives. Through the sheets of blind- 
ing light upon the one hand, and through the mist and 
clouds and flying scud of the storm upon the other hand, 
there appeared, standing or looming or peering out here 
and there, peaks and pinnacles and cut-faced cliffs, all 
capped with bare rocks, with ice or with glittering snow. 
We were in a very trap of the mountains. Our road had 
led us into the lower end of this vast basin, out of which 
the Two Medicine Greek flows; and now, having come 
down off the high bare ridge which had made it possible 
for us to get so far with our team, we were at the head of 
navigation, on foot in the Eockies. And the Eockies were 
here, playing a wild game of their own, as they have a 
way of doing in the winter, and caring no whit for us or 
our intentions. Ah! what a spectacle it was— how grand 
the spectacle, how very small the ones who witnessed it! 
Never was amphitheater more imposing than this curved- 
in valley, with its walls of black-covered and ice-capped 
mountains. 
The prospect for a hunt did not seem very favorable, for 
it must be remembered that on days when the wind blows 
thus the wise hunter does not care to go into the moun- 
tains, The cold is very intense, and moreover the blind- 
ing snow prevents him from seeing his game, though it 
may not prevent it from scenting him if by chance he 
comes ignorantly too close upon it in the storm, Knowing 
that he is apt to scare more game than he sees, the hunter 
who sees Ai-so-pom-stan wagging her ears will hide in 
camp. He knows that the mountain ram, even though 
not approached very closely, may take fright and start to 
traveling clear out of the country, perhaps managing to ^et 
ten or fifteen miles away, even over the deep snow of wm- 
ter; a distance which would mean entire loss to the hunter, 
who cannot hunt so far as that from camp on snowshoes 
in the mountains. 
We were all tired from the long day's work of yesterday, 
and there was something of a disposition to rest in camp. 
Boak was obliged to start out for home with the team, to 
return later for us, as he had not feed enough to last very 
long, and as there was no shelter for the horses nor chance 
for them to range. The snow was belly-deep to them in 
the valley where we were camped. Our lodge, when we 
got down to bed rock, was buried so far in the snow that a 
man standing at the door would show only about half the 
length of his body above the snow to one looking on from 
a little distance. The horses had been brought around to 
a place of partial shelter the night before, wallowing 
through the snow as best they could to a point a few 
yards away from the lake shore and out of the cutting 
wind. They were tired almost to death by the wearying 
pull of the preceding day, but Boak thought that as the 
load would now be light, he could manage to get back to 
the settlement without trouble. Hunter Powell, O-to-ko- 
mi and myself concluded to go with Boak a part of the 
waj"^, leaving him at the crown of the bare ridge and 
swinging back in a search for our suppositious bear den, 
in which I had a lively interest, as I thought maybe my 
long-lost grizzly was in there. McChesney also concluded 
to get out and stretch his legs; so we all four went down 
with Boak as far as John Monroe's camp at the lower end 
of the lake. Here we put on our snowshoes for the long, 
steep climb up to the top of the ridge, which we found to 
be very much worse than it bad appeared in coming down. 
We learned also what had been the cause of Boak's delay 
the evening previous, when we had lost him for a couple 
of hours. Half way up the hill was a soft snowdrift about 
10ft. deep, and in this the team promptly got stalled again 
going up with the empty sled. They fell down in the 
snow, after plunging till they were exhausted, and so they 
lay, with only a part of their backs visible, and their legs 
doubled under them in we knew not what sort of shape. 
They threw their heads out on the snow to rest as best 
they could, as they lay wearily moaning as though they 
were heartily sick of the whole business, and censidered 
it all come to a final end so far as they themselves were 
concerned. 
Not so Boak. Here rose to the occasion all th e resources, 
all the skill, all the genius of the real Western teamster. 
Not for a minute did he worry about the result, though a 
tenderfoot might have been disposed to think the team 
lost and only to be abandoned, Boak ordered us to hold 
the sled from running back down hill. He cut down a few 
projecting little trees that bothered him. He fished out a 
long log chain, and going on up the hill many yards, over 
the steep pitch at which the team was stalled, he trailed 
this out in the snow. Then he had us ease back the sled a 
bit, and unhooking the horses after long effort, he appealed 
to their sense of Western honor in terms of such force and 
effectiveness that, miracle to say, they scrambled and 
plunged and climbed indomitably forward until they topped 
the rise, and so at length lay panting again in the snow, 
but beyond the worst of it. Then Boak patiently hitched ' 
them to the end of his long chain, and swearing very im- 
partially alike at us and the horses, he heaved the whole 
outfit over the drift and on to the rise, where all was 
safe — as safety might so be charitably expressed; though 
still a pretty coil lay ahead for any teamster. ^ - , 
"Oh, I told you, all you want is plenty of faith," said 
Boak, as he gathered his reins after this little episode. So 
saying, he began to converse again in competent profanity. 
I think I never knew a man to swear so constantly, so un- 
consciously, and yet with such uniform accui:acy as Boak 
did. No matter what the surroundings, Boak swore just 
the same; and he must have been a very finical sort of 
person who could have taken the least offense at it. For 
my part, I liked it; it sounded so cheerful and so like the 
old times. The East is a most doleful place to live in. 
After we had reached the top of the bare ridge, over 
which we had come into our valley, we found above us 
still another higher ridge, which made off up to a sort of 
junction with a high bare mountain. Hunter Powell,who 
was with us, said that our bear den was somewhere just 
near the timber line, along this upper ridge some two miles 
toward the mountain. We therefore began the long and 
difficult climb up to the top of this second ridge. McChes- 
ney was now getting his first hard experience with the 
shoes, and, like all beginners, was "fighting his shoes," as 
the saying goes, and stopping often to arrange his straps. 
We were all of us yet a little soft and untrained, so the 
work seemed hard. Two weeks later we would have taken 
the same work without a thought of it. We were well 
tired when we got up to the spot where Hunter Powell 
began to look out for his bear den. We were then almost 
directly above our camp on Two Medicine Lake, and 
looked down on the lake, on whose surface the figures of 
our friends below seemed very small. 
We had a sample of mountain snowshoeing that morn- 
ing. The snow was deep and very soft, and the country 
over which Powell took us was chopped across by dozens 
of sharp coulees, each 100ft. or more in depth, with sides 
so sharp that the snow would barely hang on the banks. 
Once we cut a trail along such a bank for SOyds., the shoes 
sinking in so that we were waist deep in the snow, only to 
find ourselves at the foot of a second rise, with a pitch as 
steep as a house roof. It took us nearly an hour of hard 
work to get up out of that hole and on top of the hill 
above it, and when we had done so we were all about ex- 
hausted with the scrambling climb up the sides. In this 
work it was not snowshoeing so much as wallowing and 
crawling through the snow. The ascent was too steep to 
walk up, the shoes slipping back when the angle got be- 
yond a certain point, and of course the snow was far too 
deep and soft to hold one up without the shoes. We pulled 
ourselves along as best we could by means of boughs and 
tree trunks, this being in the heavy forest. In this 
work I was surprised to see how well the old, worthless- 
looking, fall-down pair of snowshoes worn by Powell did 
their work. These shoes he had picked up at old John 
Monroe's camp as we passed. They were a Cree-model 
shoe.made with a spliced bow of willow (since a decent piece 
of hardwood for bows was not to be obtained) and the web- 
bing was of the most spasmodic and unpremeditated pattern 
ever was. Theseshoes were longish and narrow,with a sharp, 
upturned toe, and the webbing spaces were of an average 
over an inch across. Yet they seemed to hold up a man well 
enough for the purposes of travel, not sinking down so 
very far, and when it came to the recover, the pulling of 
the foot out of the snow for the forward step, the chief 
virtue of their make was apparent. The wide meshes let 
the snow slip readily through, and the foot raised no 
weight with it, the shoe coming free and riding easily over 
the snow at the forward step. These shoes were made, of 
course, by Mme. Monroe, and the conclusion was forced on 
one that the lady knew her business. These snowshoes I 
coveted for my private collection of such gear, and old 
J ohn Monroe promised to send me on that pair and also a 
pair of "squaw shoes" made by the same hand, as soon as 
his_ season's trapping was over, though as yet they have not 
arrived. Mme. Monroe complained that she could get no 
wood for making snowshoe bows. In making these shoes 
she worked with no tool but a big knife, and the cross- 
pieces were lashed on with rawhide, each cross-piece being 
split and turned back at the end, so that a piece was offered 
as a sort of leg for the lashings to bind against the side of 
the bow, no mortise being possible with such tools as were 
at hand. This readiness to meet the difiiculties of the case 
gave these shoes their chief value in my eyes, showing as 
it did the manner in which the native peoples overcame 
the environment that beset them, using only such means 
as lay immediately about them. 
We plunged and wallowed about on tep of the ends of 
the many coulees that ran back into the mountains from 
the lake, growing pretty tired from our struggles with the 
snow, which was of course far worse in the sheltered forest 
grounds than upon the high and open ridges, and finally 
Powell concluded that he could not find the place where 
he expected to discover his bear den. He said he had 
never come upon that bit of country from that direction, 
and moreover, had not been there in the winter time, the 
snow making an entire change in the appearance of the 
country. While Powell, McChesney and myself were 
plunging about in the deep coulees, O-to-ko-mi was 
shrewdly faring ahead somewhat above us, on the high 
ground and hard snow. He said he was following a track, 
but I have a notion that he was sharp enough not to want 
to get down into those gullies. At any rate, he overtook 
us after a while, and told Powell he didn't think there was 
any game up in that country, and thought we might as well 
go home. He pointed to the high, bare mountain which 
seemed to arise at the further end of our bare ridge, above 
the edge of the timber line, and intimated that the sheep 
were over on that mountain, and that he had found them 
there in earlier hunts. 
When O-to-ko-mi pointed down the hill to the camp 
and started across lots in that direction, McChesney and I 
concluded to follow him in, as it was now well on in the 
afternoon, and we did not think Powell was going to find 
his bear den. Powell, however, remained behind, and 
prosecuted further his search for the locality in question. 
It was an awful country, that over which O-to-ko-mi laid 
out his air line to camp, and the Indian hit the trail with a 
speed and determination which made McChesney and me 
sweat copiously, though it was nearly all down-hill going. It 
had looked only a mile at the outside to camp from the top 
of the ridge at timber line^ but when we had gone a mile 
and a half or two miles, and asked O to-ko-mi if it was still a 
mile to camp, he answered indifferently, "Don' know, 
mebbe so." His English was not very extensive, and his 
countenance was no index whatever to his thoughts. As 
a pace-maker he had qualities to recommend him to ath- 
letic managers, one of which was his mercilessness on those 
who followed. He carried us into camp fairly on a gallop. 
I made signs to ask him if he was tired, but he shook his 
head vigorously and grinned pleasantly. I figured that if 
I did that sort of mountain work every day for a couple of 
weeks, I would either be dead or in mighty fine condition. 
Yet Schultz was so discouraging as to say to us that in our 
day's work, covering perhaps eight miles in all, we had 
done no sort of climbing at all compared to what we would 
have to do if we got any sheep. This was true, too, as we 
learned later; but at the time it sounded very heartless. 
We saw no game sign that day, except one deer track 
and the old trail of a lynx. Powell came down the hill to 
camp about an hour after we did, and said he had not 
found the exact place he was looking for, but had found a 
place something like it. This was a round hole in the 
snow, with frost spears around the edge, as though the 
breath of some animal had congealed there. There was 
apparently a brush heap or tree top covered up by the 
snow at that point, and it had all the ear marks of a bear 
den. At least so said Billy and Schultz, and all those who 
should have known. I did not yet relinquish hope that 
we had found my grizzly, and we made plans how we 
should get him out of there without any unnecessary sacri- 
fice of valuable human life. Schultz thought we could 
build a fire and drag it with a rope over the opening of 
the hole, thus being far enough away to get a chance at 
the bear before it got a chance at us. Billy said it would 
be a good plan to take a pole and stir up the bear, but it 
was not decided who was going to be the pole-bearer in 
such a case. It was commonly agreed that at this time of 
year the bear would be pretty lively, and wouldn't need 
much coaxing'to come out and show himself. Powell 
agreed to go up the hill next day and show us the place, if 
any of us wanted to try for the bear. 
This day closed windy and stormy, and as the air was 
very keen and we were all pretty tired, at least those who 
had been traveling, we were not sorry to gather around 
the lodge fire that night and rest and talk. This to me 
was one of the pleasantest and most unique features of the 
trip, the nightly symposium about the lodge fire. Always 
the tales turned to the old West, the old times on the 
front, the days and ways that are now gone. And we had 
talent of unusual excellence in this matter, too. There is 
no better posted man on Indian lore and Indian ways 
than Schultz, who has lived among the tribes on the wild- 
est frontier for some twenty years, while as for Billy Jack- 
son, he could make a hit in many an audience at story- 
telling, if he should preserve his" style of the lodge fire 
talks. Billy has been an army scout ever since he was 
sixteen years of age, and has served under the best and 
the most of the leading generals who have done the In- 
dian fighting in the West. He has been in the Northwest 
mounted police, in all branches of the. scouting work in 
the U. S. army, and has besides traded and hunted and 
projected around on his own hook all over the border 
when not engaged in regular warfare. Billy has retained 
all through his checkered life a good apprehension of the 
salient points of things, and is moreover blessed with a 
strong sense of humor, and a remarkable faculty of im- 
itation, so that he makes a story-teller of more than ordi- 
nary interest for an evening about the fire, when the snow 
is whistling over the lodge top and the coyotes are singing 
on the hill sides near by. It was worth a farm to hear 
Billy tell of the bloody British officer of commissary who 
audited the mess accounts of the Northwest police up in 
Alberta, or some other country of her Majesty the Queen. 
Billy, it seems, was mess steward, and he had a notion 
that nothing was too good for his outfit, in which he dif- 
fered from the oflacer in charge. "Oh, I s'y," the latter 
said one day (according to Billy), "I s'y, ye know, w'at in 
the bloody blazes do ye mean by bordering twenty pounds 
of buns? Buns! buns fer the men, w'y, ye know, w^at hall 
this means, Hi really cawn't comprehend, I cawn't really, 
ye know, now." Billy explained to him after a time 
that the 201bs. of "buns" was intended to be 201b8. of 
beans, which latter have always been held legitimate food 
for mounted scouts in Indian service. This left the com- 
missary man somewhat mollified, and no longer anxious 
lest the squad was living on food a touch too high for it.- 
We asked' O-to-ko-mi to tell us a story in his fashion, one 
of the stories of his people, and this he did at some length, 
Schultz interpreting while he washed the dishes. O-to- 
ko-mi told a strange and fabulous tale of a poor old man 
and poor old woman who were oppressed by their son-in- 
law, but who one day were saved in a singular way. The 
old man hid in a quiver a clot of blood from a buffalo the 
son-in-law had killed, and this clot of blood grew into a 
child, when it was boiled in the kettle. The child told the 
old man to tie him in turn to each lodge pole, all the way 
around the lodge, and by the time this was done the child 
had grown to be a full-sized man. This man turned out 
to be a hero, who righted the wrongs of the old people, 
and killed off oppressors of all sorts, and behaved himself 
very admirably indeed all around. He killed all the bad 
bears, but left a few bears for the future ("So you men can 
dig them out of the holes," interpolated O-to-kd-mi, with 
a touch of native humor), and he killed all the big, bad 
snakes, but left a few good little snakes so there should 
not be an entire dearth of snakes on the earth. More- 
over, he killed the spirit of a big, wicked hill, "that was a 
sort of person^" and which poisoned the air with its 
breath, and which swallowed up the people in great num- 
bers. This hero was named Clot-of-Blood, from his origin, 
and after this evil spirit had swallowed him, he cut out 
the heart of the wicked being and so destroyed it. It 
took O-to-ko-mi three-quarters of an hour to tell this story, 
which reached us through the interpreter, and he related 
it with a great deal of gravity and a good many flourishes, 
Schultz told us that this was one of the oldest of the folk 
stories of the Blackfeet. It is told at length in the "Black- 
foot Lodge Tales" by Mr. Grinnell, more graphically than 
one would be apt to tell it from remembrance, but it was a 
pleasure to hear it again, actually told in the smoke of a 
Blackfoot lodge and by one of the people who have devised 
it and handed it down. This story of 0-to-kd-mi's began 
entertainingly, "Once, in the Sweet Grass Hills," said he, 
when he began the story. And lo! the Sweet Grass Hills, 
full of all their hero stories, all theii' mysticism, all their 
