Mav 5, 1006.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
795 

back and stayed all that night in Helena, then 
started again and arrived in Fort Benton about 
the same time as did the team. There the man 
loaded up with straight provisions and pulled out 
for the north. The marshal was completely non- 
plussed. 
Meanwhile Berry was having a hard time. A 
_ raft of alcohol, which has but little higher specific 
A 
gravity than water, proved a difficult thing to 
handle, and in rapid water was sometimes com- 
_ pletely submerged. Sometimes it stuck on a bar 
or was in danger of hitting a rocky shore and he 
had to jump off and push it into deeper water. 
. For three days he played beaver, and practically 
fasted, for his provisions got wet, but on the third 
evening he reached the mouth of Sun River with 
the loss of but one case of alcohol, which the 
rocks had punctured. There a four-horse team 
~ awaited him, sent from Fort Benton by the driver 
‘ of his own outfit. 
The two men at once loaded 
up the wagon and struck out over the trackless 
prairie, crossing the line and arriving at Stand- 
Off without trouble. 
another post. 
The Bloods and Blackfeet gave us a fair trade 
that winter. We realized, however, that with the 
building of Whoop-Up we were too far west to 
be in the center of the trade; so the succeeding 
summer we moved down some miles and built 
The main event of the succeeding 
winter was the killing of Calf Shirt, the Blood 
chief, and a terrible man. He was absolutely fero- 
cious and his people feared him, he having killed 
six Or eight of them—several his own relatives. 
He came into the trade room one day and point* 
ing a pistol at the man on duty there, demanded 
some whiskey. The trader also raised his pistol 
and fired, the bullet taking effect in the Indian’s 
breast. He did not drop, however, or even stag- 
ger; nor did he shoot, but turned and walked 
calmly out of the door toward his camp. Upon 
hearing the shot a number of men elsewhere in 
the post rushed out, saw the pistol in his hand, 
and thinking that he had killed some one, began 
firing. Shot after shot struck Calf Shirt, but he 
kept calmly on for many yards, and then fell over 
dead. He possessed extraordinary vitality. The 
body was thrown into the river through a hole 
in the ice, but it came up in an airhole below, and 
was found there. The chief had always told his 
wives that if he was killed they were to sing cer- 
tain songs over his body, and he would come to 
life, if they kept it up for four days. The women 
took the corpse home and did as they had been 
told, and felt very badly when they found that 
their efforts were fruitless. All the rest of the 
tribe, however, rejoiced that the terror was 
gone. 
The next winter a row broke out among the 
traders and the wolfers of the country, the latter 
demanding that no more rifles and ammunition 
be sold to the Indians. They formed what the 
traders named in derision the “Is-pit-si Cavalry” 
and went around trying to get signatures to an 
agreement, both by threats and entreaty, that the 
traders would comply with their request, but they 
met with little or no success. Miss Lant also 
refers to this “cavalry,” and says that they were 
organized by the smugglers to escort the freight- 
ers and defend the fort. The freighters needed 
no escort, and I would like to know how men 
could be called smugglers who broke no known 
law; who, it may be said, practically settled the 
country and made it possible for a little band of 
Mounted Police to march into it. Miss Lant says 
that the latter were the result of protests to the 
Dominion Government “from the fur company 
deprived of lawful trade.’ They sold tobacco, 
tea, sugar, blankets, guns and various notions. So 
did we. They sold watered Jamaica rum and 
Scotch whiskey. We sold watered American alco- 
hol and whiskey. I claim that we were just as 
respectable as the honorable lords and members 
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Limited. The 
latter, at this very day, are selling liquor in nearly 
every town of Alberta, Assinaboia and other ter- 
ritory of Northwest Canada, but we long since 
went out of the business. 
I don’t blame Miss Lant; she couldn’t have 
known the facts. The men who told her the 
story—well, they slandered some pretty good men. 
None of them were what might be called saints, 
but the kindly, generous, honorable acts I have 
know them to do. 
Many of the traders had thousands of dollars 
worth of merchandise in stock when the Mounted 
Police drew near, and most of them were warned 
in time of their approach to bury, or otherwise 
conceal the liquor. A band of hunters brought 
the news. “Some men are coming,” they said, 
“who wear red coats, and they are drawing a 
cannon,” 
That was sufficient for Berry and me, and we 
promptly cached the ten or twelve gallons of 
whiskey we had. Only one trader, I believe, 
failed to get the warning; he had his whole stock 
confiscated because among it were found a few 
gallons of liquor. Of course, we were not glad 
to see the strangers, but we met them with cour- 
tesy and treated them well. Although they had 
come through a country teeming with game they 
were in an almost starving condition, and were 
very glad to buy our provisions. Their com- 
mander, Colonel Macleod, was a gentleman, and 
became a life-long friend with some of the “‘smug- 
glers.’ Many of the traders remained in that 
country to continue trade with the Indians and 
the newcomers, while others returned to Mon- 
tana. We went with the latter outfits. None 
“slid out,” but went from time to time decorously 
and peaceably, and with such of their possessions 
as they had not sold or givenaway. Thus passed the 
trade in the north. I can’t say that we regretted 
it. Prices of furs had fluctuated and dropped in 
value 100 per cent., few had cleared anything 
worth mentioning. Four years later the last of 
the Alberta buffalo herds dtifted south and never 
returned to that section of the country. 
We again took up our quarters in Fort Benton 
at the little adobe house and wintered there. It 
was a relief to be out of the trade for a time and 
rest up. A few of those who had been in the 
north with us crossed the river and_ located 
ranches on the Shonkin and along the Highwood 
Mountains. -Berry and I thought that we did not 
want any ranching in ours. 
We had frequently heard from Ashton. He 
seemed to be a man of unrest, now somewhere in 
Europe, again traveling in the States, once in a 
while visiting his protégé in St. Louis. Diana 
also wrote quite frequently, and her letters were 
now models of chirography, correct in grammar 
and phrasing. In some she spoke only of her 
school work and the petty incidents of her daily 
life. These, I fancied, were the ones the good 
sisters glanced over before mailing them. But 
the others told of ker dislike of the city. “I could 
bear it,” she said, “if I could only see the great 
mountains once in a while and the plains.” She 
also spoke of Ashton and told how good he was 
to her, how happy she was when he came to visit 
there. He desired her in another year to enter a 
seminary; she would go, of course, for what her 
chief wished she would do, although she so 
longed to see the dear land in which she was 
born, and to visit us, if only for a day; but she 
could not tell him that. 
And in one letter she told Nat-ah’-ki that Diana 
meant Sahm’‘i-ah-ki (Hunter Woman), and she 
was one who lived in the long ago, was a Sun 
woman, and never married. “And I must do like- 
wise,’ she concluded pathetically, “for no one I 
could care for would love me, a plain, dark little 
Indian girl.” 
“Kyai-vo!” the Crow Woman exclaimed when 
I had read this out. “I guess any young man in 
camp would be glad to have her.” 
“T think that I understand,’ said Nat-ah’-ki, 
meditatively. “I think that I understand. The 
ways of her people are no longer her ways; she 
has become a white woman in all but color.” 
Every winter since his departure Ashton had 
written that he would visit us in the spring, but 
he never fulfilled his promise. We had concluded 
that he never would come again, when he sur- 
prised us by coming ashore from a steamboat one 
day in June. We were certainly glad to greet 
him, and in his quiet way-he seemed to be equally 
pleased. We all went over to the house, and 
when the women saw him they clapped hand to 
mouth in surprise and came forward .to shake 
hands with him. “Ok’-i kut’-ai-im-i,’ they said. 
You will remember that they had named him 
Never Laughs, but he didn’t know that. 
He was the same Ashton we had known, not 
given to much speech, and with the sad look in 
his eyes, although upon his arrival he talked more 
than usual and joked with the women, Berry or 
I, of course, interpreting. 
“You ought to be ashamed,” Nat-ah’-ki told 
him, “to come alone. Why didn’t you bring 
Diana?” 
“Oh,” he said, “she is busy; 
studies; she could hardly leave them. You should 
see into what a fine lady she has grown. She 
sends you all her love and some presents, which 
I will hand you as soon as my trunk arrives.” 
Nat-ah’-ki wished me to tell him that the girl 
was grieving for the sight of her country, but I 
would not do so. ‘We are not to mix up in his 
affairs,’ I said to her. 
Nat-ah’-ki and I gave Ashton our room, and 
moved out in a tent set up beside the house. But 
that was not for long. 
“Tn summer in this country one should not live 
in a house,” he said, one morning. “Ever since 
I left here I have been longing to stay in that 
lodge of yours once more. Many a time I’ve 
thought of that robe couch, the cheerful little fire, 
the quaint things scattered around. It was a place 
to rest and to dream, I’d like to try it again.” 
I told him that he should. Our lodge was 
about worn out. So Nat-ah’-ki sent word to the 
Piegan camp to her mother—they were out on 
the Teton somewhere—to get us a good one and 
bring it in; and when it arrived we set it up, and 
there Ashton camped with us. He would sit or 
recline on his couch as he used to for hours at a 
time, smoking, smoking, and silent. And _ his 
thoughts were not happy ones, for the shadow 
was in his eyes. And as before, Nat-ah’-ki and I 
wondered what his trouble might be. She grieved 
herself for him and said many times: “He is 
very, very poor. I pity him.” 
A steamboat came in one evening, but none of 
us went over to see her land; they had become 
she has her 
