March 5, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
371 
now he looked for the last time upon the sun 
in heaven, he ran forward on foot into the fight 
and soon was killed. 
Among the Sioux villages on the Little Big¬ 
horn River at that time was a camp of Hunk- 
papas which contained many of Bloody Knife s 
relations. 
The Cheyennes have said that this happened 
in the Reno fight. 
One of the first men shot on the Sioux side 
was one of Bloody Knife’s uncles, and presently 
word went down to the Sioux camp to Bloodj 
Knife’s sisters that their uncle was mortally 
wounded and that they ought to come up and 
get the body. When the soldiers retreated, these 
two women came up to the scene of the fight 
to carry away their uncle who was not yet dead. 
On the way back they came upon the body of 
an Indian who did not belong to the camp and 
recognized it as that of a scout by its uniform. 
They were wild with grief and burning for 
revenge, and they cut off this dead man’s head, 
mutilating the body in most savage fashion, and 
carried the head to the camp on a pole, not 
knowing that it was that of their own brother. 
On the Wings of the Ski. 
The last flake had hardly fallen when we set 
out. With great consideration the blizzard had 
timed its finals to fall on a Saturday morning 
and the joyous anticipation of a full afternoon 
was ours. An apparently limitless river bottom 
that held all manner of hazards dear to the ski 
runner stretched away in virgin white, the snow 
hard-packed on the levels and feathery in the 
protected groves and hollows. 
The pacemaker led off in easy lunging strides 
while the ubiquitous youngsters frisked about 
like puppies, maneuvering their skis as if they 
had been skates. The amateur, out of the wis¬ 
dom of his painfully acquired experience, kept 
to the well-packed trail of the leader, and the 
beginner brought up the rear, lost in the won¬ 
der of it all. 
The hill that led down to the bottom lands 
had escaped the fury of the storm, and the skis, 
not as yet “chilled down” to their best efficiency, 
coasted so slowly that even the beginner gained 
confidence; but a half-mile run across the level 
polished their nether surfaces to a glass-like 
finish and every stride added a few inches to 
the pace. 
Encouraged by the precociousness of the be¬ 
ginner, the pacemaker led his cohorts in a bee¬ 
line cross country. Presently a deep-bedded 
brook barred the way, its surface buried beneath 
the snow, huge drifts dropping perpendicularly 
down its banks. It looked impassable, but the 
pacemaker went over the edge crab-fashion and 
landed right side up in a snow slide at the bot¬ 
tom where he promptly unslung his camera and 
caught the over-zealous youngsters in varying 
degrees of lost equilibrium. The contortions of 
the foot-bound amateur were lost in preparation 
for the facilis. descensus of the beginner. But 
beyond a few graceful movements, a la Isadora 
Duncan, the latter refused to be amusing. 
The bed of the brook with its virgin snow 
weaned the pacemaker from his cross country 
flight. Its many turns, its spots of glare ice and 
well-nigh insurmountable drifts presented ever 
new obstacles to be met and overcome. It finally 
debouched on the pond. 
Off swung the pacemaker again through a 
realm of startling black and white which opened 
up pastures new to the beginner and brought 
back the old delight of the unbroken trail to 
the more experienced. Yet the parallel lines 
INCIDENTS OF THE DAY. 
were not the first signs of life in the stark 
groves, for the jump of the squirrel or the rab¬ 
bit and the leap • of the deer—a familiar and 
pleasing thing now in Connecticut woods—were 
plainly pictured on the betraying mantle, not to 
mention the many triangles of hurrying bird 
feet. 
Down this slope and up a pitch the pacemaker 
broke the trail across the rolling country, head¬ 
ing for the distant river. Now a bit of the bare 
crust of other snows hastened the skis. Now 
a wind-swept pond awaited the coasting ski run¬ 
ner at the foot of a hillock and hurried him on, 
if his ski held a true course, or tumbled him in 
the snow at its furthest side if they swerved 
in their flight. 
The beginner took all hazards and grew in 
wisdom exceedingly. His skis were no longer 
cumbersome appendages to be dragged over the 
snow, but each held an easy slide over country 
where one afoot would have been mired. The 
pacemaker was quick to see this and lengthened 
his stride. Presently the feathery snow of the 
margin of trees which border the river was en¬ 
tered. The skis sank deep into it, but rode out 
on their curved prows and slipped easily on. 
The grove opened up and the wide frozen river 
lay below. Its surface presented no new ob¬ 
stacles, and as it was but an objective point, the 
party swung about and faced the setting sun and 
home. The youngsters were content to follow 
in the footsteps of their elders and the begin¬ 
ner’s falls increased with his weakening ankles. 
But what cared he. The afternoon had opened 
a new world of outdoors. The first snowfall 
no longer meant that his beloved fields and 
meadows were barred from him, and henceforth 
the howl of the blizzard would be music in his 
ears. He struggled through a tangle of under¬ 
brush which guarded a swamp impenetrable in 
summer. He followed his harsh taskmasters up 
countless hillocks, although not without much 
backsliding, and when the last hill was climbed 
and the thongs loosed, he heaved a deep sigh. 
But it was not a sigh of relief; it was a sigh 
of regret that he must leave behind his mer¬ 
curial attachments and once more walk the earth 
an ordinary mortal. Edwin C. Dickenson. 
Troublesome Canyon in the Panhandle 
Clarendon, Tex., Feb. 20. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: The natives spoke indifferently about 
a place of some interest lying seven miles to 
the southwest. The statement was made that 
to this place many people resorted in the sum¬ 
mer months and that ferns grew there and 
waterfalls added to the virgin beauty of the' 
scene. There grew on me the consciousness 
that the proper appreciation was not had for 
this wonderful land lying so near to us; so, 
feeling that there must be a charm in the bosom 
of this lightly regarded form of nature and 
not willing to wait until the “summer now is 
here,” wife, children and myself breasted the 
cold'of a December day to spy out the land of 
the Troublesome Canon. 
We hurried past farm houses and ranches 
noting the large herds attending the feeding 
grounds, and presently from the smooth plains 
we saw, seemingly rising from chaos, a box hill 
with bare cliffs supporting. Lying in close pro¬ 
fusion all around and then stretching far away 
to the land-line-blue of the Llano Estacado were 
choppy hills, serrated and wildly irregular, until 
their varying hues faded into the blue of the 
unbounded distance. We had come suddenly 
from nature’s smoothness to where the land 
had passed through the power of some pre- 
