Jan. 12, 1901.] 
FOflEST - AND STREAM. 
28 
"I come up to the Yellowstone from Green River this 
spring, but they was too many Grows a-trappin' an' 
a-prowlin' roun' thar, so I jest packed up ag'in an' lit 
out fer the Missouri, 'Bout twenty mile below here I 
found a place what suited me — chock full o' beaver, all 
kinds o' game in the bottom, nary a sign o' Injuns, nor 
nothin' 'cept a steamboat traA^elin' up or down onct in a 
while. Right here, I says, ole Longhair makes his home, 
an' I went to work an' put up a cabin out o' green logs, an' 
built a corral 'longside it to put my stock in o' nights. I 
had four head — three pack mules an' a rattlin' good saddle 
horse. It didn't take me long to build the outfit, an' I 
moved in. Safe again, I says. Injuns can't burn nie 
out, logs is too green, an', anyway, I'm inside, here's a lot 
o' port holes to shoot through, an' I'd like to see 'em 
git the stock out o' that corral. 
■'Wal, secin' as they wa'n't no trappin' to be done until 
cold weather, I built me a go-devil and worked hard all 
summer snakin' out firewood fer the steamboats, but the 
water has been so low that mighty few of 'em ever got 
above Gow Island, so I didn't sell much, jest about enough 
to pay fer my winter's grub 'n' a case o' ca'iridges. Them 
steamboat fellers knows how to charge. Thirty dollars 
fer a sack o' flour, by gosh. 
"T'other mornin' I was prowlin' 'round on the hills, an' 
the first thing I knowed an Injun popped up on a ridge 
'bout half a mile oi¥; they was twenty-five or thirty on 
'em — a war party afoot. They see me as quick as I did 
them, and scattered out to try and surround me. But I'm 
consid'able on the run myseit and I just flew down into 
the bottom., drew my stock into the corral and then into 
the cabin I went 'n' fastened the door and \vaitcd fer 'em 
to come up. They didn't come though, no closter 'n the 
timber, about 200 yards ol¥. I seen 'em sneakin' along 
the edge of it, an' give 'em a couple o' shots fer luck, but 
they didn't shoot back. Wal, I kept walkin' from one 
wall o' the cabin to another all day, a-peekin' out 0' my 
port holes, but couldn't see anything more of 'em. I 
knowed well enough, though, that they was down in the 
timber, or under the river bank, whar I went to git water. 
That's what worried me — water. Both buckets was 
empty, and after my run I was dryer 'n a fish, 'n' I dasn't 
go after any. I had a little vinegar, 'bout a cupful, 'n' I 
took a swaller o' that onct in a while, but 'twan't no good. 
"A little after dark 'n' jest afore the moon raised, the 
scoundrels opened fire, an' the way the bullets plunked 
into the logs was a caution. I fired back fast as I could, 
now from one wall, 'n' now from another, aimin' at the 
flash o' their guns, and prettA^ soon the moon came up 'n' 
'twas so light they sneaked back 'n' quit shootin'. They'd 
killed two o' my mules, but nary a bullet come in the 
cabin. Wal, you bet I didn't sleep none. I kept a-watchin' 
out all night 'n' expected they'd sure make another rush 
toward mornin', but they didn't. As soon as it got day- 
light I seen a smoke down in the timber. Gittm' some 
breakfast, be ye? says I. Well, seein' that's the case, I'll 
take chances 'n' try 'n' git some water. I was so dry my 
throat was crackin' 'n' my tongue v/as all swelled up. 
It was about thirty yards to the river where I had a trail 
down the bank. Mebby they's some on 'em layin' fer 
me down there, I sez. If they be, they'll pot 'me sure, 'n' 
I kind o' wilted, 'n' sot down fer a while. Thinkin' over 
the risk, somehow or another I didn't seem to be so 
thirsty as I was a vdiile back. But by 'n' by the cravin' 
come on ag'in worse'n ever, 'n' I got up 'n' tore 'round 
that cabin like a wild man, 'n' a-sufferin' the tortures o' 
the damned, ez the preacher said. Water or die, I says 
after a while, 'n' I grabbed my gun 'n' throwed open the 
door. They was nothin' in sight, so I picked up a bucket 
an' started out. I hadn't got away from the cabin three 
steps when I see somethin' flash in the sage brush 'n' grass 
on the edge o' the bank. 'Sun shinin' on a gun bar'l,' I 
says ; 'git back fer yer life,' an' I got. But afore I could 
run in 'n' shut the door, they was three shots fired, 'n' 
three bullets come ker plunk into the cabin wall. Dis- 
cretion is the best part o' valor, as the preacher says, says 
I. I ain't a bit thirsty, gol dum ye ! 
"■ 'Yes I be,' I says, after a while. 'What's the use o' 
lyin'? I be thirsty; my God, I'm thirsty,' 'n' I com- 
menced tearin' aroun' the cabin ag'in. The vinegar was all 
drunk up. I hunted aroun' an' found some pam killer, 
r tasted on't an' smashed the bottle ag'in the fireplace. 
How I got through that day without goin' plumb crazy 
is more 'n I can account for. 
"Night come. I'd made up my mind what to do~ 
what I had to do. I filled two belts with cartridges an' 
put 'em on; then I set the whole case, about 1,400 of 'em. 
in the back end 0' the fireplace, 'n' piled wood on top an' 
in front of 'em ready to light. I pulled off my shoes, tied 
my hat 011 good, siuck a match to the shaviii's in the 
fireplace, 'n' then grabbin' my gun 'n' with my heart in 
my throat, I pulled the door open an' lit out fer the river, 
quarterin' down like below my water trail. Say, you 
oughter heard the guns pop, flash here, flash there, bing, 
bang all around; but nary a bullet struck me. I got to 
the bank all right and dove ofif head first, stayin' under 
jest as long as I could hold my breath. When I come up 
I slung my gun on to my back with this here piece o' raw- 
hide I'd put on, 'n' lit out fer the other shore, swimmin' 
mighty low 'n' slow, so as not to make any ripple in the 
water. The Injuns never seen me after I jumped; they 
run along the bank hollerin' 'n' a-jabberin' an' a-shootin', 
but by the time I struck the other side they'd give up the 
hunt, 'n' from the light o' my fire streamin' out o' the 
cabin door, I could see 'em pilin' in there to rob the place. 
I was cold 'n' shiyerin', an' wanted to run 'n' git warm, 
but they was a little trap over acrost I wanted to see 
sprung, so I stood an' waited. 'They're eatin' my sugar 
now,' I sez, 'n' my 'lasses, 'n' jest havin' a terrible fine 
time. I wonder if that case o' ca'tridges ain't ever goin' 
to go oft? It did. A big streak o' fire shot up through 
the chimbley 'n' out the door, 'n' then ker blim she went, 
'n' then all was dark. Man! how them Injuns did yell 
' fer a minit, 'n' holler 'n' howl, 'n' I jest yelled back 'n' 
haw-hawed 'n' cussed 'em, 'n' then I lit out 's fast as I 
could in my bare feet up the river. When mornin' come I 
killed a deer ,'n' while I was roastin some o' the ribs I 
made these here shank moccasins ; then I got along better. 
Wal, that's my story. If the Injuns did run me out, I 
bet I sent some on 'em to the happy huntin' ground." 
"Longhair," Ben exclaimed, "you're all right! That 
was the slickest tricK I ever heard of. You sure must 'a' 
killed a lot of 'em." 
"I expect I did," he replied. "Ef I am afoot an' 
busted, I believe I played even on 'em." 
"Never mind about bein' broke," Ben continued. 
"Here's lots o' grub 'n' ca'tridges 'n' strychnine, 'n' they's 
lots o' wolves prowlin' round jest achin' to be poisoned. 
Yer a rustler all right, 'n' so fur as I'm consarned yer can 
go in whacks on the hull business." 
■'Sure,'' Jack exclaimed, thumping the table. 
■'Gertainly you are welcome," echoed the Scribbler. 
"Fellers," said Longhair, rising and shaking hands 
solemnly all around, and there was a tremor in his voice, 
"Fellers, all I kin say is, yer white. Old Longhair will 
do his best. The preacher said they was a silver linin' to 
every cloud, 'n' by gosh he didn't tell no lie." 
The wolfers laughed at his quaint expression, and pres- 
ently they all turned in in good spirits. 
"Well," queried the Scribbler next morning, "what is 
the programme for to-day? Another hunt for Splay- 
foot ?" 
"Splayfoot?" Longhair asked. "Who's he?" 
"He's a bear." Ben replied, "a dod gasted, cripple-footed, 
low down bear that we've been tryin' to kill fer a month or 
more. But he 'pears to be smarter 'n we are. If it wan't 
that he swiped 'n' eat our sheep meat, 'n' that we've foun' 
his^ tracks sunk deep in the sand 'n' mud, I'd swear he 
ain't no b'ar at all, nothin' but a phantom, a ha'nt, a 
shadder as ye might say, fer I had a fair 'n' square shot 
at him at 30 feet 'n' missed, never teched hide or hair, 
'n' Scrib, here, emptied his Imll magazine at him; result, 
nothin'." 
"Is his right hind foot flopped around sideways?" 
Longhair asked, 
"It is ; the track of it reaches clear across to the tracks 
of his left feet." 
"It's him!" Longhair said. "It's him sure; he was 
hangin' aroun' my place off 'n' on all summer, 'n' swiped 
my good meat several times, but I never got to see nothin' 
more of him than bis tracks." 
"Wal," Ben concluded, "ye can amuse yerself by huntin' 
fer him ag'in ; ye've got to learn the country 'n' the trails 
about here anyhow, 'n' while yer pokin' aroun' just keep 
yer eye peeled fer him." 
It was another blank day, as usual, so far as Splayfoot 
was concerned. In fact, none of the wolfers found any 
fresh signs of him, and it was thought he had left the 
vicinity for a time, and perhaps for good and all. • 
"Boys," said Ben. after the supper dishes had been 
washed and the wolfers sat in front of the fireplace lazily 
smoking. "Boys, I've been thinkin' all day about the 
close call Longhair here had. Now suppose a war party 
was to sneak in an' surround us, how long do you think 
we would last if they staj^ed with it? We've only got one 
bucket, an' half the time that's empty; consequence is. 
sooner or later we'd have to make a break, an' right there 
we'd git our lights put out. Here's thick brush right in 
front o' the door fer 'em to lay in, an' a nice hill 
just back o' the cabin for 'em to cache behind, an' we 
wouldn't stand no show at all." \ 
"That's right," Jack allowed. "If they come an' just 
laid low fer a few days, they'd soon carry off our top 
knots. Oh, well, we've got to take chances." 
"Yes, take chances an' trust to luck, as the preacher 
said," Longhair commented. 
"Here we be," Ben continued, "just naturally sur- 
rounded by Injuns, Assinnaboines, Gros Ventres an' Crees 
north of us; Yanktonais an' other Sioux to the east. 
Cheyennes an' Grows on the south, an' the cussed 
Piegans to the west. It's tlie biggest wonder in the world 
some on 'em ain't tackled us a' ready; sooner or later they 
will, an' I believe I've got a scheme to beat 'em. We can 
dig a small tunnel from the river to come out right in this 
here cabin. It's only 31 yards. I stepped it to-day, an' 
that s nothin' fer old miners like us. Now then, what do 
yoi\ all say?" 
The others thought it an excellent plan, and the next 
morning all went to work with a will. There was only 
one shovel and one pick in the camp, but they were kept 
gomg steadily turn about. Jack built a barrow to trans- 
port the dirt, making the wheel of a cut of cottonwood 
log bound with rawhide, and the body of a buffalo hide 
laced to the handles. Work was commenced near the 
edge of the water in the face of the high cut bank, and as 
the earth was wheeled out and dumped it was carried 
down stream by the deep, swift current. A progress of 15 
feet was made the first day, but thereafter the work went 
more slowly. In two weeks, however, the barrow was 
completed, and the exit at the river was concealed by a 
pile of beaver cuttings and drift wood which the wolfers 
gathered with their boat. In the cabin the entrance to the 
tunnel was directly under the table. Some short stick-? 
and grass, covered with a thin laver of dirt, effectually 
concealed it. 
While the work was in progress one or another of the 
wolfers had been out on the hills each day to look for 
Indian sign since the arrival of Longhair, and with his 
narrow escape in mind, they had become more cautious. 
At sunset especially, the movement of the game was 
closely observed. So long as the herds grazed or wan- 
dered quietly about, there was nothing to fear, for in those 
days a war party could not have traveled half a mile in 
that country without alarming several bands of lauffalo or 
antelope or deer, which would have gone scampering away 
m all directions. They were the wolfers' barometer of 
safety and danger. Splayfoot had evidently left the coun- 
try, Jack claiming that Longhair's appearance had scared 
him out. 
"The chances is," that worthy said, "that he's hangin' 
around my cabin down the river feastin' on Injun meat 
We'll have to go down thar some day an' find out what 
did really happen when that case o' cartridges busted." 
The Scribbler. 
The Country of the Horse. 
On a vacant lot near my house m the city of Washing- 
ton a rough-haired pony is pastured this winter, every 
mild day, and as I pass him he is a recurrent joy to me, 
because he looks so much like a Rocky Mountain cayuse. 
He picks aimlessly at the long dry grass, or stands, a 
iraudulent counterieit of misery, as he looks at me 
through the tangled forelock which covers his mournful 
eyes. Well do I know that appealing gaze. Have I not 
seen it in the eyes of every rascally pack horse in British 
Columbia, the land where horses work one day a week 
and stuff themselves the other six! The fatter and lazier 
the horse, the more tearful and woe-begone the eye. 
It is worth going there to see them. As you journey 
tlirough the valleys, between the stupendous peaks, it 
looks as if there were twenty horses to everj' log house, 
and a few dozen thrown in for good measure, in every 
creek bottom where the bunch grass grows rank. To 
whom do they belong? Like the log huts, the mournful 
and over fed cayuses are the property, not of white men. 
but of the Indians, who live, perhaps, the easiest lives 
of any people in North America. In the great valley of 
the Frazer for instance, there are uncounted miles of 
horse feed on the hills, and tincounted myriads of salmon 
run up the Green Mountain rivers. There is a little gold 
in the river banks, and Mrs. Siwash and her daugiiter 
can wash out gold enough to pay for a calico gown any 
summer day. Not enough money in it to tempt a white 
man. Thei^e are richer fiekte for him. But the British 
Golumbia Indian, simple and easy-going, finds a living 
almost as readily as do the horses that find pasturage 
everywhere, and like him take no thought of the morrow. 
Of course some of those horses get roped in, and make 
assiduous all summer journeys to Peace River, laden with 
flour bags and whiskey, toiling up and down the dizzy 
mountain paths, week in and out, to the sound of a tink- 
ling bell. Others go on hunting trips, and snort with 
futile indignation when compelled to transport deceased 
wild animals. But even these unfortunates revel in weeks 
and months of leisure, and chew the grass of idleness, un- 
impressed by scenery whose appalliirg magnitude makes 
tourists gasp. 
Speaking of scenery and mountain trails, a New York 
paper had a story Sunday, in words and figures following: 
Theodore Roosevelt is about to face a lest of his bravery more 
trying than San Juan Hill. After retiring from his present office 
he will go next month to hunt bear and mountain lion in the Little 
Book Cliff me.sa in C'olorado. The trail by which this mesa is 
approached is considered by old hunters to offer the greatest test 
of nerve in Colorado. Many of those who try it are carried back 
fainting. The hunter has to ride along a path of crumbling rock 
2 feet vviide, with a precipe 2,500 feet deep at his side. 
Here Governor Roosevelt will have to pass, with no cheering 
regiment and none of the pomp of war to encourage him, and only 
the calmest and coolest kind of courage will sustam him. 
A momentary faihne of the nerves will leave him a shapeless 
thing at the bottom of an abyss 2,500 feet deep. Those who know 
it, hold this a trial of courage compared to ^yhich ordinary warfare 
is child's play. 
The old hands are making bets among themselves as to whether 
the renowned and ferocious "Teddy" will pass over the tr^ with- 
ovit attempting to "crawl." 
Now, wouldn't that give you the croup? All men who 
have hunted in the mountains know about those trails, 
where "a single misstep," etc. There are only about a 
million such places in the West, all alike, with slight varia- 
tions. I suppose tlie average horse trail on the side of a 
canon, anywhere from Patagonia to the Yukon, is about 
two feet in the clear, and if the cayuse should go crazy 
and walk off the side, it would make no practical differ- 
ence whether the fall was twenty-five feet or twenty-five 
hundred feet, if there were rocks at the bottom. But 
after some experience on horseback in that country you 
learn that the passenger cayuse is as safe as the Chemical 
Bank of New York City. When you are on level ground, 
among bushes, your horse may try to scrape you off by 
rubbing up against the saplings; but where the way is 
narrow and the view precipitous, the rough-haired little 
mountain horse is, from, pureh^ selfish motives, a model 
of conservatism and prudence, asking of you only that 
you sit steady. And Theodore Roosevelt knows the 
breed. For all the danger of that Colorado trail, would 
to God I might ride it every day. 
As for the little horse that is my neighbor, in the vacant 
city lot, I wonder what he would think if he could be 
transported to British Columbia, and be ridden by some 
moon-faced Indian girl in a calico frock, sitting astride 
like a little man? Or, the next day, to be turned up a 
steep trail, with an Indian hunter's luggage on his back? 
Or the Indian himself, and a rusty rifle, model of 1873, 
under the Indian's right leg? All this in the shadow of 
the glorious mountains. Happy the horse, or the man, 
whose daily companions are the mountains, and the In- 
dians. There are worse things than Indian girls, and 
rifles model 1873. Feederic Irland. 
A Small Cook Book 
ft 
as 
K 
Take inventory of the good things in this issue 
of Forest and Stream. Recall what a fund was 
given last week..' Count on what is to come next 
week. Was there ever in all the world a more 
abundant weekly store of sportsmen's reading? 
St 
St 
For Our Clufa Houseo 
Chapter II. — Dinner. 
The man who is coming in to dinner to-night has been 
chained to business in the city until he lost his appetite, 
and to-day he has tramped twenty miles and found it 
again. So you good heartedly set to work to get hiin up a 
good dinner, and spoil the whole thing by giving him too 
many things — meat, chicken, potatoes, turnips, beans, apple 
pie, preserves, hot biscuit, tomatoes, mixed pickles and so 
on, ad infinitum. He really wants but half of these. Give 
him a broiled beefsteak, a baked potato, some tomatoes, a 
cup of coffee and some dessert and a little cheese. Broil 
the steak over a clear, hot fire. The secret of bro'ling a 
beefsteak is to make it very hot at first, so as to bake it 
into a crust outside and thus retain the juices of the 
meat. A good way to cook the tomatoes is as follows: 
Put them in a flat baking dish along with some lumps of 
butter, salt and pepper, and about a teaspoonful of sugar, 
together with a layer of fine bread crumbs over the top 
with a few more lumps of butter. Bake in a hot oven 
until the bread crumbs are browned, and even blackened 
at the edges. Serve in the pan as it comes out of the 
oven. A word about bread. Most country folks bake 
bread too little. They stop when the crust is a light 
brown. It is sure to be better if baked to a dark browji 
