Marcu 3, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

to me. Berry’s mother, the faithful old Crow 
woman, both lectured me long and earnestly on 
the duty of man to woman, on faithfulness— 
and what they said hurt, for I was about to do 
that which they so strongly condemned. 
And so, in the morning, Nat-ah’-ki and I 
parted, and I shook hands with every one and 
went on board. The boat swung out into the 
stream, turned around, and we went flying down 
the swift current, over the Shoukin Bar and 
around the bend. The old Fort, the happy days 
of the past year were now but a memory. 
There were a number of passengers aboard, 
mostly miners from Helena and Virginia City, 
returning to the States with more or less dust. 
They gambled, and drank, and in a vain effort 
to get rid of my thoughts, I joined in their 
madness. I remember that I lost three hundred 
dollars at one sitting, and that the bad liquor 
made me very ill. Also, I nearly fell overboard 
near Cow Island. We had run into a large 
herd of buffalo swimming the river, and I tried 
to rope a huge old bull from the bow of the 
boat. The loop settled fairly over his head, 
but we had not counted on such a shock as I 
and the three others helping me got when the 
rope tightened. In an instant it was jerked 
from our hands. I lost my balance, and would 
have followed it into the water had not the next 
man behind happened to catch me by the collar 
- and drag me back. 
We tied up to the shore each night; there 
were constant head winds after we entered 
Dacotah, and when early in October we arrived 
at Council Bluffs, I was glad to leave the boat 
and board a train of the Union Pacific. In due 
time I arrived in the little New England town, 
where was my home. 
I saw the place and the people with new 
eyes; I cared for neither of them any more. It 
was a pretty place, but it was all fenced up, and 
for a year I had lived in the beyond, where 
fences were unknown. The people were good 
people, but, oh! how narrow-minded. Their 
ways were as prim and conventional as were 
the hideous fences which marked the bounds 
of their farms. And this is the way most of 
them greeted me: “Ah! my boy, so you've 
come home, have you. Been a hull year in the 
Indian country. It’s a wonder you wasn’t 
scalped. Those Indians are terrible bad people, 
so I’ve heard. Wall, you’ve had your fling; I 
suppose you'll steady down now and go into 
business of some kind.” 
To only two men in the whole place: could 
I tell anything of what I had seen or done, for 
they were the only ones who could understand. 
One was an humble painter, ostracised by all 
good people because he never went to church, 
and would occasionally enter a saloon in broad 
daylight. The other was a grocer. Both of 
them were fox and partridge hunters, and loved 
the ways of the wild. Night after night I would 
sit with them by the grocery stove, long after 
the staid villagers had retired, and talk of the 
great plains and the mountains, of the game 
and the red people. And in their excitement, as 
their minds pictured that wonderful land and 
its freedom, they would get up and pace the 
floor, and sigh, and rub their hands. She wanted 
to see it all, to experience it all as I had, but 
they were “bound to the wheel.” It was im- 
possible for them to leave home, and wife, and 
children. I felt very sorry for them. 
But even to them I said nothing about a cer- 
tain other tie which bound me to that land of 
sunshine. There was not a moment of my 
waking hours in which I did not think of Nat- 
ah’-ki and the wrong I had done her. Across 
the several thousand miles which separated us, 
I could see her in my mind’s eye, helping her 
mother in the various occupations of the lodge, 
and her manner was listless; no more her hearty 
infectious laughter rang out, and in her eyes 
there was an expression which was far from 
happy. Thus I pictured her by day, and in my 
dreams at night, awakening to find myself talk- 
ing Blackfoot to her, and trying to explain 
away my faithlessness. The days passed for 
me in deadly monotony, and I was in constant 
strife with my relatives. Not with my mother, 
I am thankful to say. I think that she rather 
sympathized with me. But there were uncles 
and aunts, and others, old friends of my long 
dead father, all well meaning, of course, who 
thought that it was incumbent on them to ad- 
vise me, and shape my future. And from the 
start we were antagonistic. They brought me 
to task for refusing to attend church. To at- 
tend church! To listen to a sermon, forsooth, 
upon predestination, and the actual hell of fire 
and brimstone awaiting all who lapsed from the 
straight and narrow path. I no longer believed 
that. My year with old Mother Nature, and 
ample time to think, had taught me many things. 
Not a day passed but what I got a lecture from 
some of them, because, for instance, I played 
a harmless glass of beer with some trapper or 
guide from the North Woods. There was more 
real human kindliness, more broad-mindedness 
in one of those simple men of the woods, than 
there was in the hearts of all my persecutors. 
Diagonally across the way from us lived a 
good old Methodist. It was his habit to ascend 
to the attic of a Sunday and pray. On a sum- 
mer day, when windows were open, one could 
hear him for hours at a time, entreating his 
God to forgive his many and grievous sins—he 
had never committed one—and to grant him an 
humble place in the life hereafter. He also 
came and besought me to change my ways. To 
change my ways! What had I done, I won- 
dered, that made all these people so anxious 
about me. Was this man’s life a happy one? 
No; he lived in constant fear of a jealous God. 
What had I done? I had been friendly to cer- 
tain black sheep who longed for a pleasant 
word. I had entered the hotel bar and in broad 
daylight clinked glasses with them. These were 
not, in my estimation, sins. But, deep down in 
my heart, there lay a heavy load. One wrong 
thing I had done, a grievous one. What of 
Nat-ah’-ki? 
There came a certain night when all the well- 
meaning ones were gathered at our home. They 
had decided that I should buy out a retiring 
merchant, who, in the course of forty or fifty 
years, has acquired a modest competency. That 
was the last straw. I arose in my wrath, and 
tried to tell them what I thought of the nar- 
row life they led; but words failed me, and, 
seizing my hat, I fled from the house. It was 
past midnight when I returned, but my mother 
was waiting for me. We sat down by the fire 
and talked the matter out. I reminded her that 
from earliest youth I had preferred the forests 
and streams, rifle and rod, to the so-called at- 
tractions of society, and that I felt I could not 
ode 
bear to live in a town or city, nor undertake a 
civilized occupation of any kind, especially one 
which would keep me confined in a store or 
office. And she, wise woman, agreed that as 
my heart was not in it, it would be useless to 
attempt anything of the kind. And she also 
admitted that, since I had come to love the 
plains and mountains so well, it was best that 
I should return to them. I said nothing about 
Nat-ah’-ki. Some time in the future, I de- 
termined, when I had done the right thing, she 
should learn all. For the first time in weeks 
I went to bed with a light heart. Two days 
later I boarded a train, and in due time arriving 
in St. Louis, put up with genial Ben Stickney 
of the Planters’ Hotel. There I fell in touch 
with things once more. I met men from Texas 
and Arizona, from Wyoming and Montana, and 
we talked of the fenceless land, of the Indians 
and the buffalo trade, of cattle and miners and 
various adventures we had experienced. We 
would congregate in the lobby of an evening 
and sit there talking aud smoking until long 
after midnight, or we would go out in a body 
and see the town in true western style. If we 
were a trifle hilarious, the police were good, and 
kindly looked the other way when our 
sombreroed crowd tramped by, singing per- 
chance, at the top of our voices. 
Also, I did not forget Nat-ah’-ki. I bought an- 
other trunk, and prowling around among the 
stores picked up various washable things of 
quaint and pretty pattern, strings of beads, a 
pair of serpent bracelets, a gold necklace, and 
various other articles dear to the feminine heart. 
At last the trunk was so full that I could barely 
lock it, and then, gathering up my things, I 
boarded a train for Corinne, Wyoming. We 
were, I believe, four days and nights en route. 
From there by stage to Helena a week, and on 
to Fort Benton two days more. My first in- 
quiry was for Berry. He was down at the 
mouth of the Marias, the trader told me, with 
the Piegans, but his mother and the Crow 
woman were living in the little cabin above, and, 
with a knowing wink, he added that he believed 
a certain young woman named Nat-ah’-ki was 
with them. ; 
It was very early in the morning. I hurried 
out and up the dusty trail. A faint smoke was 
beginning to arise from the chimney of the 
little cabin. I pushed open the door and 
entered. Nat-ah’-ki was kneeling before the 
fire-place blowing the reluctant flame. “Ah,” 
she cried, springing up and running to me, ‘he 
has come! My man has come!” She threw her 
arms around my neck and kissed me, and in 
another instant she was in the next room cry 
ing out: “Awake, arise; my man has returned! 
Berry’s mother, the Crow woman, hurried out 
and also embraced and kissed me, and we all 
tried to talk at once, Nat-ah’-ki hanging to my 
arm and gazing at me with brimming eyes. 
“Ah,” she said, over and over, “they kept telling 
me that you would not come back, but I knew 
that they were wrong. I knew that you would 
not forget me.” 
Truly, these were my people. I had returned 
to my own. Come what might, I vowed never 
to even think of leaving the little woman again, 
and I kept my word. Kept it, say I—I never 
had cause nor wish to do anything else. 
That was a queer breakfast Nat-ah’-ki and I 
had; in fact, no breakfast at all. We gave up 
