5 The Attack By Air

The peace about them was so deep and long that the youngest warriors began to think their dangers had passed. The absence of tracks, disclosing the proximity of great animals, was convincing to them. Surely the king wolf himself, having seen so many of his pack slaughtered, had given up the pursuit of such formidable game, and had gone in pursuit of easier victims. The great panther had been slain. They had seen his dead body fairly sprouting with arrows, and perhaps he had no brethren to avenge him. But Roka, and Pehansan who stood next to him in the command, refused to relax caution. They continued to insist that if any hunting was done the hunters should always be four and that the other six must remain together at the camp.

Elk and moose, of enormous size, were abundant, but they did not shoot at any of these large animals, preferring for the present the smaller game, and not willing to let the huge bodies rot in the forest or be devoured by wolves. While they enjoyed hunting keenly when hunting was necessary, they did not desire to kill game merely for the sake of killing. Their sport was always compounded with need, and, if the need did not exist, there was no sport.

“If we do not wish the meat of deer and buffalo,” said Roka, “then let deer and buffalo live. The white people kill them too fast already.”

“It will be a long time before white people come into this great northern sea of mountains,” said Will.

“May they never come!” said Roka devoutly. “It may be that Manitou has reserved this region for the red man and that when the white man comes to its edges he will say, ‘Stop, or perish beneath my thunderbolts!’”

“I hope you’re right,” said Will earnestly. “Some place should be set aside forever for hunters and forest rovers. There ought always to be a wilderness filled with mystery and the unknown.”

He felt during this week in the giant forest that he was growing wilder than ever. Once or twice he took the revolver out of his belt and looked at it curiously. He had never fired it since they left the village. It seemed to be a sort of inverted anachronism. What had a man of ten thousand years ago to do with cartridges and pistols? The bow and the arrow were the weapons meet to his hand. But he kept the revolver, nevertheless. His reason told him a time would come when it would fill a need that bow and arrow could not.

They found fine quail in open places, and, although it took superlative skill to kill them with arrows, it was done, and they were a welcome addition to their larder. Fat wild ducks and wild geese were found on the numerous streams and they shot a number of them, very juicy and tender. So far as flesh was concerned they had feasts beyond those of any epicure in any capital of the world.

They still spared the moose and elk, and these colossal specimens of the deer tribe, feeling their immunity, hunted food near them, paying no attention to man, save to gratify a natural curiosity now and then. One evening just before twilight the ten were around the fire, preparing supper, when Will noticed a vast, heavy shouldered, hook-nosed figure, outlined against the setting sun, in truth almost in the center of the red beams. It was the largest moose that he had ever seen, the largest, he believed, that anybody had ever seen. By its side the ordinary deer would have been a dwarf.

Ungainly, but majestic and still, it gazed fearlessly at the ten warriors. The longer Will looked at it the bigger it seemed to grow, expanding steadily in the vivid beams.

“I think it must be the father, or at least the king of all the moose nation,” he said. “I wonder if it means its fixed stare at us to be a warning that this is the land of the beasts, and man must not come.”

“I do not know,” said Hoton very gravely. “It is Inmu who reads the language of the animals, but the moose does not raise his voice, and so he cannot tell what is in the heart of the great deer.”

“But Inmu does not always have to listen to voice. Sometimes he can read through its eyes what an animal thinks.”

The face of Inmu was rapt. He had been gazing fixedly and a long time into the eyes of the moose.

“He is telling us,” he said, “that though we have had days of peace and no foe has appeared, great changes will soon be upon us. Waditaka was right when he thought this the land of the animals only, in which man is forbidden. The moose himself tells us so. He bids us go!”

There was not one among them, not Will himself, who did not believe every word spoken by Inmu. Of course, he could read the heart of the moose through his eyes. Now that he told them the words of the animal they themselves understood.

“The horns of the moose can be terrible,” said Roka, “but his hoofs can be far more so. The hoofs of the great bull elk before us would cut through our bodies, bone and flesh, like battle axes.”

“Since we wage no war on the moose,” said Hoton, “why should he wage war on us?”

“Because we have come into the country that belongs to him and the other great beasts,” replied Roka. “It is true also that the moose cannot trust man. At any time, if we are pressed for food, we may turn upon him and slay him with our arrows. Can any wild animal trust man? He may know that the present is only a brief peace between him and man. No, my warriors, none of the beasts can ever feel safe for a long time in the presence of our kind.”

“You tell the truth, Roka,” said Will, regretfully, “and yet in the legends of the white people, to whom I have belonged, there is a story that man and the animals once dwelled together in peace on the earth.”

“It is only a story, Waditaka. Once the great beasts pursued us and now we pursue them. Perhaps Manitou has ordained that this should be our day.”

“The big moose is leaving us,” said Will. “I feel that our period of ease and safety is over.”

“We will start again tomorrow,” said Roka. “Our quivers are now filled to overflowing with new arrows and we must be on the way.”

The young warriors were willing enough to go. It was a wonderful region in which they had been staying, but they knew that others just as wonderful or more so lay beyond, and they were eager to penetrate new mysteries. They had been used to hardship and danger all their lives and fear did not enter the strong heart of youth. Although they did not know the meaning of the word, they had entered upon a great period of romance, and they intended to realize it to the full.

“We press on toward the east, do we not, Roka?” asked Will.

“Always, Waditaka, because we mean to reach the great plains there, where the northern buffalo herds range. It will take us several days, though, to pass out of this valley, and before we leave it we may have other deep streams to swim across.”

“And if so, Roka, I suggest that all of us take the water side by side. That attack by wolves when Inmu and I stayed behind shook me up a lot.”

Roka smiled.

“We shot well then,” he said, “and covered your retreat, but we might not do so well next time. It shall be as you say, Waditaka. We will all cross together.”

The nights had become so temperate that after their cooking was over they allowed only a small fire to burn, but Roka never neglected the watch. Always two men were on guard, usually for periods of four hours, and on their last night there Will with Hoton kept the second watch.

Hoton was good company. He and Will could talk in low voices without disturbing the sleepers, and Hoton’s imagination, always vivid, was very much alive then. His mind was upon their journey, and he predicted that they would come to great rivers, mountains higher than any they had seen before, and multitudes of huge wild animals.

“But we shall conquer all, rivers, mountains and beasts,” he said.

“Among the white people they have an expression, ‘a bad start, a good ending,’” said Will, “and, as tonight looks far from propitious, perhaps we can expect a brilliant march later on. Look, Hoton, how the clouds are hiding the stars from us!”

In the vast canopy of branches over their heads the buds had now burst into bloom, making a kind of bright veil between them and the sky, but the two young sentinels, gazing through it and upward, saw heavy clouds drifting up with slow certainty from the southwest. The warm wind though that blew steadily had no touch of damp in it, and the darkening vault did not seem to betoken rain. The wind presently increased and it sang through the lofty tree tops in an extraordinary manner. It seemed to the listening youths as if solemn music were being played far, far over their heads.

“The great trees always fill one with wonder and admiration,” said Will. “It is said that there are vast trees in California five or six thousand years old, trees that so far as one knows never die a natural death, and perish only through fire or stroke of lightning. Trunks thrown down by lightning will lie on the ground half a thousand years before they begin to decay. The trees here may not be as enduring, but they must be as high. Their tops seem to touch the sky.”

“Maybe Manitou makes them so tall because he wishes to reach down and touch their new green leaves with his hands.”

“Or they stretch themselves to reach his feet. Whatever it may be, Hoton, I hope that neither the ax nor fire nor lightning will ever take down the noble forest about us. It grows much darker.”

“So it does, Waditaka, and the wind playing among the buds three hundred feet or so above our heads has strange, new songs.”

“It is true, Hoton, and there is a decided change in the note. It has to me a threatening, or at least a sinister sound. Either the state of the air affects the spirit or the spirit affects the state of the air. I cannot tell which.”

“No one can ever tell. Look how the high tree-tops move and hark to the song of warning among them! It says:

The slow darkness now became swift. It poured up from the southwest in a vast bank, black and almost solid, and always the sinister whistling and shrieking went on over their heads. The stars were blotted out. The last coals of the fire died, and it was with difficulty that the two sentinels, sharp and trained though their eyes were, could see the figures of their sleeping comrades. Will and Hoton stood close together, for the sake of company and because there was strength in union. Will knew that the young Dakota, believing thoroughly in the spirits of good and evil, was sure that the evil were abroad in the somber darkness, and that the good were in hiding. He felt that way himself, because, for the time at least, he was as much of a Dakota as the Dakotas themselves, and shared fully in all their beliefs.

“It’s not a song far up there now, it’s a crying,” he said. “What does it portend?”

“I do not know, Waditaka, but I think that before long we shall see.”

Will felt an extraordinary quiver in his blood, and his hair was cold at its roots. The sense of an immense desolation and of an uncanny air about them oppressed him. It was hard to keep a watch in such intense gloom, and one must rely on ear. Yet the angry and complaining cry of the wind was so full that he could scarcely hear anything else. He drew still closer to Hoton, and the two did not speak for a while. Then Will was sure that he detected a new note in the sound. It was like the whirr of vast wings, and he was quite sure, that for a few moments his heart ceased absolutely to beat. Then Hoton grasped him by the shoulder suddenly and with convulsive power dragged him down.

Will, as he fell, still grasped his bow and held it aloft. He saw a dark body and a great stretch of wings shoot through the air where his head had been. He saw great red eyes, a long, terrible beak, and the outstretched wrist that held the bow was scored across by a long talon, as if it had been burned with a red hot iron.

“Shoot, Waditaka, shoot!” cried Hoton, who was also lying on the ground.

As well as he could in his position Will sent arrow after arrow at the dark, flying figures, and Hoton shot even faster. The reply was a harsh and angry screaming, the beating of great wings, and the gleam of beak and talon. Then the darkness swallowed up the invaders and the wind whistled alone. Roka and the others had sprung to their feet, and were asking insistently what was the matter.

“An attack from the air,” replied Hoton. “Great birds, of what kind I know not!”

“Down again!” cried Will. “They’re coming back!”

He intended to drop to his knees, but as he went a heavy wing struck his head and threw him flat For a few moments he was dazed, but he was conscious that the air was filled with the beating of wings, the rush of bodies and the flashing of beaks and talons. All the Dakotas were shooting arrows as fast as they could, and were shouting to one another. Will struggled back into a sitting position and loosed a shaft at a dark, heavily-feathered body just overhead. A harsh scream of pain and ferocity was the reply and he knew that he had hit, but probably had inflicted no mortal wound, as the shadow disappeared, and with it all the others. The second assault had been repulsed and the assailants were gone in the thick night.

“Build up the fire!” cried Roka. “There is nothing that prowlers, whether of earth or air, dread more than fire and light!”

He was the first to kick away the ashes from a few coals yet alive. Two of the men quickly blew them into a flame, two more piled on dead wood at all speed, while the others stood ready, arrow on the string. The fire blazed up rapidly. Never had it been more welcome to them and they built it higher and higher, until it was a roaring pyramid, luminous and brilliant, piercing the heavy, vaporous darkness that had enfolded them, and casting ruddy gleams in a wide circle. Then the ten stood, arms in hand, trying to’ look beyond the light into the darkness and then gazing at one another.

They were shaken, shaken as they had not been at any other time on their great march. The face of the stern and dauntless Roka was an ashy gray, and Pehansan stared into the gloom with uneasy eyes. Beyond all question the ten feared whatever it was that flew beyond the circle of light, and they stood very close to the fire, which for tens of thousands of years had been man’s greatest protection against fierce carnivora of all kinds. Once or twice they thought they heard the flapping of invisible but mighty wings out there in the sinister darkness, and a quiver ran through the blood of every man. But they were as brave as ever Achilles or Hector, these sons of the wilderness, and, despite the high beating of their hearts, they stood ready with bow and arrow. A long time passed, though, and nothing came.

“I think,” said Roka, “that fire will guard us even better than our bows and arrows until the dawn. As there is so much light here, and we have certainly wounded some of them, I do not believe they will come back again. Is that your opinion, too, Pehansan?”

“It is, Roka, but if I tell you what is in my heart I will have to say I do not wish to sleep any more this night. I do not fear what walks on the ground, because we walk there too, and we meet the wolf, the panther and the bear on equal terms, but I do fear that which comes in the dark and in the air, because I cannot follow.”

“You speak the mind of us all, Pehansan. We will await the dawn together. I think none care to sleep.”

For further protection they built another fire and then sat between the two, talking in low voices, still under the spell of the heavy, vaporous gloom, and of the uncanny attack by the winged creatures of the darkness. It was a slow dawn, but it came at last, gray and pale, though a dawn nevertheless. The great trees took definite outlines before them as if they were coming out of a fog, and over the far mountains the dusk lifted.

Roka would not let his men stir from the fire until they had eaten a sustaining breakfast. Then they made a careful search, and picked up several large grayish feathers which no warrior in the band was able to identify.

“What do you think they were, Roka?” asked Will.

The leader shook his head as he looked with a doubtful eye at a huge feather left in his hand.

“I do not know, Waditaka,” he replied. “They may have been great owls of the north, vast beyond any of which we have dreamed, used to preying on small animals, ignorant of man and so ready to attack him, or else mighty eagles which, like the animals, may grow here much larger than those farther south. We do not know, and we may never know. But this I do know. I hope never to be attacked again in such manner.”

After they had eaten and their nerves were fully attuned they searched the ground minutely for their arrows, going even beyond any possible limit to which an arrow could have been shot, and recovered all but five.

, “The five have been carried away in the bodies of the birds,” said Roka. “It was not such bad shooting in the darkness and against flitting figures in the air.”

The slight wound across Will’s wrist was bound up. Beyond that he paid no attention to it, as it was certain he would take no poison from it, owing to his youth and iron health. Then they gladly left the camp, which had been so pleasant hitherto, and as the day had turned from gray to gold their usual high spirits returned.

“Wonderful will be the tale we will tell when we return to the village,” sang the irrepressible Hoton. “We have not only fought with the beasts of the earth, and conquered them, but we have fought with the terrible winged creatures of the air, and conquered them, too. Lo, the attack came in the dark, and it was fierce and terrible but the young warriors, directed and encouraged by Roka and Hoton, beat them off! Mighty are Roka and Hoton, and promising are the young warriors with them!”

“Hoton,” said Will, “our great journey will always be remembered among the tribes, but those who made it may be forgotten, save one.”

“And who is he, Waditaka?”

“None other than yourself, Hoton. A voice sometimes speaks louder than a deed. You will be the teller of what we have done, and you will sing its greatness. All the while it will be Hoton more, and the rest of us less, and the time may come, when it will be Hoton wholly and the rest of us nothing.”

“No, Waditaka, no! Who am I to cheat you of your credit? The rest of you helped me much last night in the great battle against the birds! I shall always admit that without you I might not have beaten them off. It is true, too, that the five arrows carried away in the bodies of the birds were shot by me, but you nine did the best you could. No, Waditaka, no! The warriors who are to come generations from now will always say that Hoton had help. Nor will the singers and medicine men forget the names of those who helped him.”

“It is the spirits of the air, the good spirits, that help us,” said Tarinca, who had a deeply religious nature. “Without them and the aid Manitou gives to them we could do nothing. Often when we have been at the verge of death they have sent us aid and have delivered us.”

“I do not deny the aid of the good spirits,” said Hoton, “but the spirits will not do all for a warrior. If he does not go forth to battle, be it with man or beast, with a willing heart, then the spirits leave him to himself.”

But the talk soon shifted to lighter themes. Their spirits were uplifted too much for austerity to prevail long. Hoton chanted more songs of the Dakota and now and then other warriors joined with him. Roka did not seek to silence them. They were quite sure the great forest was not inhabited by human beings, and by day they had no fear of the animals. Noise, in truth, while the sun shone was likely to drive away the mighty flesh-eaters.

They came to a creek, deep and swift, which required swimming, but they made ready and entered it all in a line, arriving at the farther shore without attack or the sign of it.

“It is because we were prepared and left no one behind who could be attacked,” said Wanmdi. “The wolves knew it. They must be lurking behind us somewhere in the forest, and their king has been watching us, as he always does.”

“Wanmdi is right beyond a doubt,” said Roka, gravely. “The great wolf not only has his own eyes, ears and nose to tell him what we are doing, but also the evil spirits who whisper to him. While the good spirits are for us, the evil spirits are on the side of the fierce beasts.”

“It may be, O, Roka,” said Pehansan, a thoughtful man, as well as a great hunter, “that the beasts take another view, and that they think the spirits fighting on their side are good, while those who help us are bad.”

“It is likely, Pehansan, and yet we cannot tell the difference between good and bad save through our own minds. We cannot see things as the beasts see them, and, if man and beast come into battle then the spirits that are on the side of man are good spirits to us.”

The next night, to the great joy of them all, was very clear and bright, with a full and gleaming moon and hosts of friendly stars quivering and dancing in a dome of brilliant blue. Nevertheless they built their fire high again, as they wished to take no vain risks, and they sat about it, with bows strung and arrows ready, the glances of most of them turning toward the air rather than the earth. But Roka was confident that another winged attack would not occur.

“I think,” he said, “that the vapors and darkness of last night inflamed the great birds of the north. When the brain is heated, be it the brain of man, animal or bird, objects are not seen as they are, and they may have come against us, when they would not do so at any other time.”

“The five arrows they took away in their bodies are proofs to them we’d best be left alone,” said Will.

The night seemed to grow in brightness. All the great stars of the north blazed in the sky and hung low. The forest was filled with a silver radiance. They saw almost as well as in the full day, and Roka, choosing Will, Inmu and Hoton, made with them a wide circuit about the fire. They found nothing until the circle was almost complete, and then it was Hoton who pointed to the earth.

“See,” he said, “the father of all the bears came for a while to watch us.”

It was a vast footprint they looked upon, the largest any of them had ever seen. Will had learned to reconstruct almost any animal from the size of its track, and he judged that the bear, making the one before him, was at least double the size of the big grizzly of Idaho and Montana and for all he knew it might have, too, double the ferocity of the grizzly, which in all truth was fierce enough. In his heart, he was more afraid of this monstrous beast than of wolf or panther.

“Shall we follow its trail a little?” he asked Roka.

The leader nodded. The huge footprints veered toward the north, and the four followed them, keeping very close together. The ground was still comparatively free from undergrowth and Will was glad of it, as the eye always had a clear range for several hundred yards, and there was no chance for a giant bear, ambushed, to launch himself upon him at a single spring. Roka was deeply interested.

“He marches in a straight line,” he said, “and so he must have had a plan. A bear without a plan would have wandered about. He saw as much of us, perhaps, as he wished, and now he is going somewhere. Ah, we now behold part of his plan!”

The trail of the great bear had merged suddenly with that of another as great, the second beast coming from the west, and the two then going on together.

“It may have been just his mate,” said Pehansan.

Roka shook his head doubtfully.

“Had time and place been ordinary it would have been so,” he said, “but the thoughts of the bears are on war. Let us follow the trail, and see if something else does not happen soon.”

A mile, and a third bear joined the first two, another mile and a fourth was added, the trail leading straight ahead, as if the definite plan still prevailed. Roka was still very curious, but he decided that they had gone far enough. They were now four or five miles from the camp, and if the bears had a plan they must disclose it themselves. They walked back to the camp, watching closely every clump of bushes that might conceal an ambushed beast, and they were glad when they saw the cheerful flames again, shining across the moonlit spaces. The six who had been left behind listened eagerly to the story of the four who returned.

“I think the next attack upon us will come from the bears,” said Pehansan. “The wolves have failed, and the panthers have failed, though they do not give up their purpose. But both wolf and panther will step aside for a while to give the bear a chance. What think you, Roka?”

“As you do, Pehansan. Wolf and panther are both cunning. They know now that our arrows are flying death, and they are willing for the bear to try our mettle. And remember, my warriors, that the bear is wise. Those that follow us may be even wiser than those we have known, and as the bear is the strongest animal in the world of the Dakota we must be watchful and keep our arrows sharp.”

A strong watch was posted, but nothing occurred that night, although they crossed a bear trail the next morning, and Roka inferred that several groups of the monstrous beasts had been about them in the dark. But as usual their buoyancy grew great in the bright sunshine, and they courted attack. The country, however, became more suitable to ambush. Heavy and almost continuous undergrowth appeared, and it was cut by many little streams marshy at the edges. Night approaching, they looked, as usual, for a suitable place in which to light their fire, and it required some time to find it, as they wished high, dry ground. They finally chose a knoll near the banks of a narrow and deep creek, which, like all others in that region, flowed with a swift, cold current, fed by the snows on the high mountains. Dead wood was drawn up in abundance and they built a high fire, which they always felt to be their prime necessity, their greatest guard against the wild beasts, and, when this task was finished, Will started toward the creek for water.

There was no undergrowth on the knoll but it was plentiful beyond it on every side, and Will was compelled to push his way through twining bushes. Bearing in mind the continuous caution of Roka that everything was to be feared, where the country afforded hiding and ambush, he carried his strong bow in his hand, and his quiver, well filled with arrows, over his shoulder.

The twilight had just come and the forest was turning gray, but the fire was a great core of light, and it seemed to Will as the low boughs closed behind him that he still felt its warmth on his back. He also heard the pleasant talk of his comrades, and once more his heart thrilled to them. They were his companions in a great adventure. They had set forth into the mighty northern wilderness, as much explorers and as daring as Columbus and his men. The forest was as unknown to them and as mysterious as the waters had been to the Italian.

Will at that moment looked a Sioux as much as any of Roka’s men. His face was tanned dark by long exposure to winter storms and all other kinds of weather, and his dress was like theirs. Through long association he had acquired their manners and even their intonation of voice. It is true, too, that while he looked like a Sioux, he also acted like one, and, what was a more telling proof of a plastic nature and the power of propinquity and habit, he almost always thought like a Sioux. He looked upon the great animals with the same eyes as theirs, and like them he filled the air with good and evil spirits.

True to his character now as a son of the wilderness, he advanced through the bushes with caution, peering here and there, lest one of the wolves so much to be dreaded might be lurking in ambush. He was continually looking down instead of up, and at a point where the growth was thin he was startled by a tearing sound almost over his head. A quick glance showed him four great legs and above them a huge, looming body.

Will sprang back by impulse, but a thick pine bush stopped him, and then, by the same impulse, he snatched an arrow from his quiver and fitted it to the bowstring. The bull moose, vast, lowering and formidable, was as much startled as he. But, interrupted at his feeding, by the insignificant creature that had come stealing on two legs through the bushes, he turned savagely and charged. Will, swift and skillful though he had become had time to let fly only a single arrow. It struck the great beast in the shoulder and was buried deep there, but it was only a fillip to the anger stored up in twenty-five hundred pounds of tremendous vitality.

The moose struck with the terrible sharp hoofs that would have cut the lad into shreds, but he leaped aside and the shoulder of the animal striking him on the head sent him whirling. He fell among the bushes, but had the courage and tenacity to cling to his bow. The bull, puffing fiercely and anxious to finish the foe that had stung him, turned and leaped again, bringing his hoofs down like tremendous cutting knives. It was only the unseeing rage of the great beast that saved Will then. He was prone, but half hidden in the low bushes. One hoof grazed his legging and cut it away as if it had been shaved off by a razor, and the moose drew himself back to spring again.

Aroused by his appalling peril, Will gathered his strength, rolled over and over, and the next leap of the moose landed his four hoofs where he had been, but from which place he was now a half dozen feet away. Then he sprang to his feet, fitted another arrow to the string and shot it. But he was impeded so much by haste and the bushes that it merely struck the side of the bull, ran under the skin and came out again. Then the huge beast went mad. The blood, pouring from his side, and his eyes distended, he crashed through the bushes in such fierce pursuit of Will that the lad did not have time to discharge another arrow. He knew that roaring and puffing death was hot on his heels, and he doubled and dodged like a frightened rabbit pursued by a lynx.

He ran behind a great tree, came to a small gully and darted up it. The moose missed him and then crashed away at a great pace toward the north. Will, after running a couple of hundred yards, realized that he was not followed any longer, and crouched panting in the gully. He had not thought to call for help, but the warriors, hearing the noise in the thicket, had come at speed.

“Waditaka! Waditaka!” they called.

“Den!” (here) panted Will in Sioux, and then the head of Pehansan appeared above the bushes, followed by those of Inmu, Hoton and Tarinca.

“What is it, Waditaka?” asked Pehansan. “The thicket is torn as if it had been threshed about by a whirlwind! You look as if you had been running for your life, and your legging hangs only by a string!”

“I have been running for my life, O, Pehansan,” replied Will in a whimsical tone, yet one full of relief, “and as you see, I ran well and with success. Among the bushes, where I looked too low, I walked straight into the biggest moose that ever lived, the king of all his tribe. He was the king beyond all doubt, because he had his crown and diadem on his head, and carried his scepter in his hand.”

“‘Crown!’ ‘diadem!’ ‘scepter!’ I do not understand those words! Have the senses of Waditaka gone away for a little while?”

“I forgot. Maybe my senses did go wandering for a space. They had cause enough. I was attacked by a gigantic bull moose, Pehansan. I wasn’t doing anything to him, and it was wholly unprovoked. He charged me all over the thicket. I fired two arrows into him. I filled him with pain and anger, but I don’t think I did him any serious hurt. It was one of his hoofs that cut my legging loose, and I’m grateful to Manitou that he didn’t cut any closer. When he missed me in this blessed little gully he charged away, raging, toward the north, and the faster and longer he goes the better I’ll like it.”

The mouth of Pehansan slowly widened into a broad smile.

“I cannot but believe that Waditaka speaks the truth,” he said. “He and the moose are well parted.”

“As I said, I was doing nothing to him.”

“But often we attack the moose when it is doing nothing to us. Can we expect Ta (moose) to be more friendly than man?”

“I don’t care whether he is friendly or not just now, Pehansan, but I want him to be distant.”

“I should have been here,” said Hoton loftily. “With my swift arrows I would have slain Ta, and, when the rest of you came running, I would have been standing with one foot on his body, singing the song of the great hunter.”

“Perhaps,” said Pehansan, “and perhaps also we would have found your body, cut into little pieces by the hoofs of the moose. We are glad that Waditaka has escaped. Ta, wounded and enraged, is a terrible animal to face.”

“But I would have faced him and I would have sent the arrows into his body fast enough to make an unbroken stream in the air,” said Hoton.

“It was lucky either for you or the moose, Hoton, that you were not here,” said Pehansan, “but it is quite clear that another is now added to the list of our enemies among the great beasts. Ta belongs with Xunktokeca (wolf), Warankxi (bear), Inmutanka (panther) and the great birds, the kind of which we know not, but which may be Wanmdi (eagle) or Hiyankaga (owl). We have one more enemy to meet, and there are times when the hoofs of Ta are as bad as the teeth and claws of Warankxi.”

They returned to the fire, and Roka, who had been anxious, shared to the full Pehansan’s belief that they now had a new enemy in the moose.

“Waditaka is not to blame,” he said, “because by his story—and Waditaka always tells the truth—the combat was forced upon him. It seems, Pehansan, that we shall have to meet all the animals in battle before our great journey is finished.”

“But we have the young men with whom to meet them,” said Pehansan, looking around at the gallant faces.

“That is true,” said Roka. “Now, Hoton, tell us the story of that forefather of ours who saw the great buffalo herds coming for days and days out of the vast caves thousands of miles to the south.”

And Hoton, with burning eyes and vivid gesture spun the tale, while the others sat and listened and the fire flamed and flickered.

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