Jttly 81, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
83 
the grasshoppers raided and nearly ruined it. This was 
followed "by another hopper raid in 73, which completed 
the ruin. This broke up the enterprise. The Major 
promptly remitted the rent due on the land and we 
organized for a big game hunt on the Upper Loup that 
winter. 
A quarter of a century has rolled away since then, and 
great has been the change wrought by its passing years, 
but they have left me still chasing butterflies. 
E, P. Jaques. 
SHEEP AND SNOWSHOES.— VI. 
A Winter Hunt on the Summit of the Rockies. 
No Huntlne Weather. 
The morning of March 11 dawned very cold and stormy 
and hunting was out of the question. Hunter Power 
started for home, agreeing to stop at John Monroe's lodge 
and feed the dog and young puppies that had been aban- 
doned there, and which we feared would be frozen to 
death. Before he went home he made an effort to catch 
some trout, but found the weather too cold. I went out to 
put some finishing touches on my marten trap, but found 
the temperature so low that my fingers nearly froze, so 
that I was a long time in getting the trigger to hold. We 
never knew exactly how cold it was at our camp at this 
time; but Major Steell's thermometer at the agency regis- 
tered 27° below zero on two different nights, the night of 
March 10 and one a little later. We suppose that it was 
probably colder at our camp than it was at the agency. 
Above us in the mountains the white wreaths of snow were 
flying all day long, and the hunters said that it would be 
impossible for a man to live up there, or at least to live 
and hunt with any pleasure. We spent the day, for the 
most part, sitting about the lodge and listening to stories 
which our friends told us of the old days. By pulling up 
the fold of his blanket behind him so that the wind would 
not have a fair sweep at his back, one could be very com- 
fortable in the lodge, even on so cold a day. But we 
watched the doorflap very jealously, and the dog Shep, 
who had a habit of poking his head out and leaving the 
canvas door ajar, became a subject of frequent maledic- 
tions; for the air that came in was Arctic in its frigidity. 
Even the least experienced of the party had now learned 
something of the theory of the lodge, and had come to 
admire it more and more. Billy Jackson had fixed up a 
fine bed for McChesney and me, this being in the back 
part of the lodge— the post of honor. Schultz explained 
to us that in the old tribal days there was a certain eti- 
quette of the lodge which was rigidly observed. Thus, 
the back part of the lodge was the place where the "medi- 
cine" of the lodge owner stood, this perhaps being sup- 
ported by a little tripod between the fire and the back of 
the lodge. It was contrary to the etiquette for any one to 
pass between the fire and the medicine, and the ceremoni- 
ous politeness required that to cross from one corner to 
another in the back part of the lodge, one should go clear 
around the fire and cross on the side nearest the door. It 
was contrary to etiquette to have any sticks of wood left 
pointing toward the medicine |when the fire was built 
or replenished, nor was it considered a fortunate or 
proper thing to carry out an^ ashes trom the lodge fire. 
The little life-saving flame in the center of the conical 
house seems to have been invested with a certain respect 
or veneration, as indeed it might very well have been; 
for without fire one would be beyond hope in such a 
country. 
Odd bits of information came up in the snatches of con- 
versation in our daily circle about the lodge fire. Thus 
Schultz recalled with amusement a certain wedding in 
which a white friend of his had married an Indian 
woman. It seemed that this woman had had four hus- 
bands before this time. "It was a rattling good wedding, 
though," said Schultz, "and I remember that there were 
five gallons of alcohol as part of the refreshments." It 
seems that custom at weddings vary chiefly in degree, no 
matter what the people or country. 
"Speaking of wives," continued Schultz, "reminds me of 
old Brocky, oneof the chiefs of this tribe. You know, 
Brocky had four or five wives, and the priests have always 
been at him to be civilized, and give up all of his wives 
but one. Brocky said he allowed that that was the right 
thing to do, and that he would have to get into touch with 
modern ways of thought by following the priest's advice, 
but he said to the priests: 'I have had to give up good 
money to buy these wives of mine, and I can't afford to 
turn any of them loose without getting paid for it. If you 
people will give me what my wives cost me you can hav« 
the whole outfit, or all of them but one, just as you think 
is right.' Of course, the priests couldn't see it that way, 
but Brocky can't understand even to-day why there was 
anything unreasonable in his proposition." Nor indeed is 
there, for if we are to believe opera bouffe there are many 
white men who would gladly do just as Brocky offered to 
do. though perhaps not in so plural a manner. 
We talked something about the religion of the Indian. 
An odd complexity comes in here. The government tries 
to civilize the Indians, but yet cannot rank them as citi- 
zens. They may go clear up to the Hne of citizenship, but 
still in the eye of the law are savages. If they were citi- 
zens they would be guaranteed under the constitution the 
right to worship as they see fit, but as it is th6y cannot do 
so. The Indians are all the time asking to be allowed to 
hold their medicine lodge, which they say it is very hard, 
especially for the ancient ones of their tribe, to give up! 
They like their own fashion of religion better than ours, 
and insist that it is harmless. TheV claim that at their 
medicine lodge they sing and pray after the way of their 
fathers, make presents to their old people, something after 
the way we make Christmas presents to each other, and 
do not indulge in any ghost dancing or that sort of thing. 
The government forbids these ceremonies of the old 
religion as retarding the progress of the Indians in the 
ways of civilization, and yet it sets the limit beyond which 
they may not go in the path of civilization. 
Winter Explorations. 
If the day of March 11 had been cold, the night follow- 
ing was still colder. We could not tell how low the ther- 
mometer went, but as we later found that we nearly always 
under-estimated the record, we presumed that it must have 
been in the neighborhood of 30 below that night. We 
had to use all our extra clothing and were none too warm 
ftt ths-t. Jt was one of the regnlar amusements of the trip 
to witness the struggles of the different members of the 
party to get into the sleeping bags and beds at night. 
McOhesney would wiggle and twist and groan his way to 
the bottom of his Kenwood, and then I would take a turn, 
and sometimes Billy would come over and hold up the top 
of the bags while we were working our way down into the 
interior. The additional blankets which we put into the 
bags made them a very tight fit. In the morning we were 
covered with a dense rime of frost. We did not keep up a 
fire on any night in the lodge. 
The morning of March 12 was still and brilliantly cold, 
everything sparkling and glittering and wonderfully beau- 
tiful, with all the myriad aspects of the mountain to inter- 
est and confuse the eye. While the others stayed at camp, 
Billy,_0-to-ko-mi and I took a walk up through the woods 
to visit the Two Medicine Falls, a cataract not set down in 
the books or newspapers, but well worth a description as a 
natural curiosity. These falls are on the Two Medicine 
Creek, between the lower and the next upper lake of the 
Two Medicine chain, on which there are in all four or five 
lakes, great and small. Between -the two lakes there is a 
difference in altitude of 100 or 200ft., a giant wall of reck 
running across the entire front of the valley at that point. 
The stream does not plunge over this rock wall, but drops 
below the top of it, then burrows through it, and comes 
out of the perpendicular face of the lower side through a 
round hole, as though from a sewer pipe let into the wall. 
The actual fall of the water is only about 40 or 50ft., per- 
haps, but the wall towers straight up above the fall to a 
great height. The stream plunges out of its confined sub- 
terranean channel into a wide and lovely pool of water, a 
good pistol shot across and many feet in depth — one of the 
grandest trout pools that ever lay out of doors, and one of 
the most abundantly stocked, according to the story of our 
friends, since the trout can get no higher up the creek than 
this point, and fairly swarm when they are stopped there 
on their run up in the spring. 
We stopped some time at the falls, enjoying the beauty 
of a spectacle which but few white men have ever seen, 
and taking some observations of the country round about 
with a view to later hunting trips in that direction from 
our camp. We could see no game trails on Rising Wolf 
Mountain, but the lynx-eyed 0-to-ko-mi spied two sheep 
feeding high up on the side of the mountain across from 
Rising Wolf and on the south side of the Two Medicine 
Lake. These sheep looked like tiny dots, far up on the 
side of the big mountain, and it was some time before I 
could make them out, even after the others had tried to 
show them to me. It would have been altogether beyond 
my ability to see or suspect game at any such distance, and 
I felt a pronounced wonder and admiration at the Indian 
hunter's eye. 
We found the snow deep and soft in the dense woods, 
and had a hard hour or two at breaking trail. The weather 
remained cold, and it was a poor time to expect any game 
to be moving, yet we rather expected to see more sign of 
fur than we did. We scared one pine marten off his perch 
on a pine tree, and saw where he had made off through 
the snow, so we stopped and buiit a dead-fall near by, in 
the hope that we would get him later. We also saw two 
trails of lynx, a coyote track, and the trail of a wolverine. 
We also found a "bear tree," where some old bear, a good 
sized one evidently, had measured his height against the 
tree trunk, and scraped off the bark for a few. feet just to 
show how big he was. All these little odds and ends of 
the signs of the woods showed us that we were in a game 
country. Indeed, one of the beauties of a winter trip is 
that the snow carries a record of the woods life, so that 
one can be encouraged by now and then seeing tracks of 
his game, always great assistance in getting to see the 
game itself. We were confident that we were in a good 
sheep country, and had no doubt of getting our sheep as 
soon as the weather moderated. We could see many 
angry storms raging up on the mountain tops, and even 
low down in the valley where we were the air was 
cold enough for us, as soon as we stopped the exercise of 
shoeing. 
We followed down the Two Medicine Creek for some 
dietance, looking for a crossing place, for the rapidity of 
this stream prevents it from freezing at many points, and 
for a distance of perhaps a mile below the falls the water 
was open for all or part of the way. We wanted to find a 
crossing point so that we could get over the creek on our 
way to the upper lake, on which we intended to camp a 
few days later, making a side trip from the main camp, 
and going further back into the mountains for a look at 
the sheep and goats of Rising Wolf Mountain upon its 
upper side. It was not a very good report that we took 
back home that night. All we could say was that the 
snow was too soft for 6led or toboggan, and that the "whole 
outfit for a side camp would have to be carried on our 
backs, with the certainty of a long, sharp climb up the 
divide between the two lakes in case it was possible to 
effect a crossing upon some log or felled tree. This diffi- 
cult proposition did not seem to appeal to the majority 
very forcibly, especially as we had not yet hunted out the 
country above us very thoroughly. 
Sheep and Beans. 
It had proved too cold for fishing that day, and Mc- 
Chesney and Schultz could show no addition to the grub 
stock when we got back to the Irdge in the evening; but 
we made a gre^t supper of sheep and beans, of which each 
man ate a most gui-prising quantity. The mountain men 
almost without exception prize the meat of a fat mountain 
sheep more than any other wild game, and we agreed that 
it was venison hard to beat. Its taste is between that of 
venison and mutton, not in the least strong, and very 
sweet and nourishing. As for the bean, its excellence as 
woods diet is well known, Billy, quoting the words of a 
Frenchman friend of his, said: "Ze bin is ze best dam 
fruit what come to Montan'." In this jwdgment we also 
concurred. 
We passed a quiet evening in camp, the lodge, for some 
reason impossible to divine, having made up its mind to 
stop smoking for a time, so that we were very comfortable. 
I found it possible to read as I lay down upon the bed, 
with a cag.dle mounted in a split stick stuck into the grouud 
near by. By this time nearly all the ice had melted from 
under the beds in the lodge, and it was daily becoming 
more warm and dry and comfortable. 
A Wild Night. 
That night, a little past midnight, 1;he climate broke all 
subsequent records by a wind storm such as rarely happens 
even in this vale of winds on the Two Medicine. The 
wind reached the point of a gale, and went howling over 
our heads in the woods with a force which threatened to 
blow the lodge from over us. It was not a steady wind, 
but a series of wild intermittent blasts; the storm at times 
lulling and then making a determined onslaught, as though 
under a deliberate plan to overthrow us. It needed small 
imagination to hear all sorts of voices, screams and call- 
ings, orders and threats and exclamations in the air. At 
times the puffs of air had almost an explosive quality, this 
betimes added to by the reports of the flopping ears of the 
lodge, blown loose upon the storm. In the morning Billy 
Jackson announced gravely that he was sure we had been 
visited by the evil spirit of the Crees, the mocking demon 
which comes on the storm and harasses the hunter, firing 
off' his gun, and making all sorts" of demoniacal noises as 
he goes. This word we received with little pleasure, for it 
began already to appear that we were pursued by misfor- 
tune, since we were losing so much time without a chance 
to get out and hunt. From that time on we had still worse 
luck in many ways, so that we knew what Billy Jackson 
had said was true, and that Pah-kuk-kus had indeed made 
us the subject Of his bodeful sportiveness. 
It was impossible to hunt on the morning following this 
storm. The mountains had a very wild and angry look, 
full of storms and wraiths of snow and mist. Schultz said 
we might expect a Chinook before long, but that we would 
hardly get to hunt until it came. We could do nothing 
but sit in camp and tell stories. We talked of all the cold 
times we had ever seen or heard about. Billy Jackson 
told us of one gruesome incident of winter warfare in the 
old times. He said that atter the Tongue River fight he 
was one of the party that brought out the dead soldiers to 
the nearest fort to be buried, as it was impossible to dig 
any graves in the snow-covered and deeply-frozen ground. 
The bodies of the soldiers froze where they fell, froze stiff 
and solid. When the packers took them out, the corpses 
were packed on the araparejos like so much cordwood, 
two dead soldiers being carried on each mule, one on each 
side. 
"That was the fight where Yellowstone Kelly made 
some prisoners," said Billy. "He captured seven squaws, 
and later on one of the squaws hanged herself. This is not 
the only case I have known in which the Indian has com- 
mitted smcide .when taken prisoner. I knew three Chey- 
ennes to hang themselves in prison once. I'll tell you 
about that some of these evenings, if I don't die of rheu- 
matism before then." 
Pah-kuk-kus Leaves Tracks. 
We had now been in camp a week and had had only 
one day of hunting. March 14 was fair and fit, so we 
turned out for a try after game, not stopping to thiuk 
what day of the week it was. Really it was Sunday, as we 
later learned, though we had lost count of the days and 
did not know that it was Sunday. In this we were far 
more remiss than the Indians. O-to-ko-mi went on the 
hunt that day without saying anything, but when he got 
back at night he said that he had known all along that it 
was no good to hunt on Sunday, but he thought he would 
not speak of it. At another time later than this I saw this 
same carefulness not to violate the Sabbath shown by a 
native hunter. Old John Monroe was lying at his camp, 
and when asked if he was going to hunt replied that he 
was not, and that he never did hunt on Sunday, as he was 
taught that it was wrong. This may appear rather sur- 
prising to those who are in the habit of ascribing aU 
manner of bad ways to the Indians and all manner of 
good ones to the whites; yet it is true that far away in the 
mountains, where at times the white hunters forget what 
day of the week it is, the Indian hunters of the reserva- 
tions know it and observe it, for reasons which to them 
seem good- 
McChesney and O-to-ko-mi hunted together that day, 
and they saw eight sheep, though oinly two of them were 
rams. They were not able to get a shot, although they 
had a long, hard day of it up near the rocks. Shultz and 
I went up to the place where I had killed my ram to see 
what was going on up in that part of the country. We 
found, as he had predicted, that the big cat had visited 
the carcass of the sheep. Half the ribs of one side had 
been gnawed or torn off, and the flesh was beginning to 
disappear from the accessible part of the carcass. Luckily, 
we had hung up the two hindquarters when we first 
skinned the sheep, so that we saved that Meat. We 
thought that the biggest cat, which had made the tracks 
we first saw, had not been about, but that two cats of some 
sort, probably very large lynxes, had been operating for 
two or three nights at the carcass. Again we longed for a 
trap or some poison, for we knew we now had a chance 
for some fur. The snow was always blowing so much in 
the mountains that it was hard to follow a trail more than 
a few hours old; but we thought that if the trail had been 
fresher we could have jumped the cat by means of the dog 
without a very long run, as it would be almost sure that 
the animal would not go very far away from the bait, but 
would be back once or twice each day to feed. It is not 
easy for a lynx or a lion to get ready-made meat in such 
large quantities, so that such a "snap" is not liable to be 
overlooked by one of those gentry. 
As the tracks of the beast could be seen leading away 
down the mountain side, Schultz and I concluded to follow 
the trail, in the hope that we could make it out to a point 
where the dog could run it by scent, in which case we felt 
we were sure of our cat. We could not figure out what it 
was we were following. The track was about as big as a 
small saucer, but the animal did not seem to break through 
crust which we hardly thought would have held up a lion, 
and moreover, at one point where the fellow had stopped 
we could see no tail marks on the snow where it had sat 
down, so we concluded it must be a lynx, though a very 
large one, as the distance apart of the toe pads clearly 
showed. 
Our cat track led us down the mountain almost parallel 
to the snowshoe trail along which we had come. "See," 
said Schultz, "he's going back along our snowshoe trail of 
the first day, to see what sort of things we are, and to spy 
out any pursuit. I think we'll find that he has turned off 
into the big swamp below us there." 
Sure enough, the cat, after ranning alongside our trail 
for a mile or so down the mountain side, did turn into the 
cedar swamp, and there we followed the deep tracks 
through a couple of miles or more of the worst sort of trav- 
eUng. The shoeing was terribly hard here, and the con- 
tour of the country about as bad as could be asked. We 
