Feel of it, Joe--ain"t it soft?"
"I move we name this shack of ours Camp Kent," said Joe.
"Carried!" Tom cried. "Camp Kent it is--and I guess we won"t forget whom it"s named for in a hurry, either."
"Thanks, boys," the doctor laughed. "And I won"t forget you. I wish I were going to stay here a month, and use the rope with you. But I"ve got to get back to the sick people who can"t come to the Park for a tonic.
Good-bye--and good luck. Joe, keep up the good work--live out-of-doors, keep dry, don"t worry, and you"ll live to be ninety-nine. Tom--don"t forget to test your anchor stone! I"ll be out in the morning early, and get my grub at the hotel. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," the boys said.
And when he was gone they looked at each other, at the coil of soft, strong, beautifully braided Alpine rope, and Tom exclaimed:
"Well, by gosh! you never can tell. When he blew in, with those funny old blue socks on, and the spectacles, and his talk about the Matterhorn, I thought he was a freak or hot air artist, and so did Mr.
Mills. Instead of that he"s a prince--that"s what he is, a prince!"
"I never said anything at the time," Joe answered. "But I liked him all along. Gee, I bet he"s a good doc, all right."
"I bet he is, too--and he says you"re all right now!" Tom cried, giving Joe a punch and a hug. "We can go climbing with this old rope together pretty soon. By jiminy, we _got_ to carry our cameras up a cliff and get some goat pictures. Say, that"s the sport! And I"m going to see Mr.
Mills about staying on with him, and write home about school, and we"ll just stay here and see the snow come, and get our skis sent on, and, gee, it"ll be wonderful!"
"If we do that, I got to get busy and earn money," Joe replied. "I"m going over to the Saddle Company offices at the hotel to-morrow and see about another cooking job."
"Go to it," said Spider. "I"m willing, now the doc says it"s O.K."
But he didn"t have to go over to the hotel. That very evening a bell-boy from the hotel came for him, and he set out the next morning with a party on a four day trip. They went over Piegan Pa.s.s again, then up into the Red Eagle country south of St. Mary Lake, then up on to the top of the Divide over Triple Divide Peak, where the water from the snow-fields flows in three directions--to the Pacific, to the Missouri River, and so to the Gulf of Mexico, and to the St. Mary River, then the Saskatchewan River and so to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean.
They descended to the headwaters of the Cut Bank River (so called because of its steep banks) and camped in a lovely canon. Then, for the next stage, they climbed practically over the old war trail of the Blackfeet Indians, who went across the Divide over Cut Bank Pa.s.s to attack their foes, the Flathead Indians, on the west side. Then, for their final stage, they took the so-called Dry Fork Trail, to Two Medicine Lake. This was a thrilling trip, over a portion of the Divide that truly deserved the Indian name of the backbone of the world. At one point the knife-blade ridge was only thirty feet wide, with yawning precipices on either side. The chief guide said, "This is the place where they say you can spit down into the lake three thousand feet on the east, and throw a stone more than that on the west." Joe didn"t have to get off his horse and try, in order to believe him. And he was glad enough there was not a gale blowing, too!
The trail finally led down around the base of old Rising Wolf Mountain to the Two Medicine chalets, on the lake, where the party spent the night.
Early the next morning, the party left for the railroad by bus, and Joe went with them to Glacier Park Hotel, where he caught the Many Glacier morning bus back to his own camp. It was a fine trip, with splendid scenery, but he missed Mills as the chief guide, and still more he missed the friendly companionship of Bob, Alice and Lucy, who had made his first trip so much like a family party. On this second trip he was just the cook for a group of three men and their wives. But it meant twelve more precious dollars for his fund--or, rather, it meant six dollars for his fund, and six to send home to his mother.
When he got back "home," as he called it, he found Tom had carved a sign, "Camp Kent," on a piece of board, and nailed it to a tree by their tent. He also found Tom full of an exciting piece of news.
"There"s going to be a Blackfeet Indian pow-wow here at Many Glacier to-morrow," he said, "and it"s going to end with a barbecue, which Big Bertha says is almost as good as a Hi-yu-Mulligan-potlatch."
"As a _what_?" Joe demanded.
"No, not a _what_, a Hi-yu-Mulligan-potlatch," Tom laughed. "Big Bertha says out in Washington, where he comes from, when they want to give the Indians a good time they give "em a potlatch, which means a free feed, and a Mulligan potlatch is one where the free feed is Mulligan stew, and a Hi-yu-Mulligan-potlatch is just a jim-swizzler of a potlatch that makes an Indian yell, Hi-yu! Get it now?"
"I get it," Joe laughed. "But what"s a pow-wow, and why"s it being held here?"
"I guess a pow-wow is short for an Indian good time, and it"s being held here to give the folks at the hotel something to look at--as if the mountains weren"t enough. The hotel is crammed full, and so are the chalets, and I had three people in every tepee last night. I"ve been doing nothing since you left but chop wood, and haul water, and air blankets."
"Poor old Tom," said Joe. "Well, I got twelve cartwheels in my jeans--feels like a ton o" coal, too. That"ll help toward the autumn.
Now I"ll help you get the camp ready for the hikers that are coming in to-night."
"It"s all ready," Tom answered. "The crowd last night got away early this morning. The Indians are going to get here this afternoon, and set up their tepees down on the flats below the falls. We"re going to walk down there now and see "em come in, so hurry up and get yourself some grub. I"ve had mine. I was up at five to-day and couldn"t wait for your old bus to get in at one-thirty."
"I"ll be with you in fifteen minutes," said Joe, as he put some bacon in a pan.
CHAPTER XIX--The Indian Pow-Wow--Tom and Joe Get Into The Squaw Dance
The Indians were arriving when the boys reached the meadows below the falls, and were already beginning to set up their wigwams, or tepees, beside the Swift Current. The chiefs and braves, in their Indian dress, with feathered head-gear and bright blankets, were on horseback, and so were most of the squaws and children; but the tepees were being transported from the reservation out on the prairie in motor buses, and there was even an entire Indian family in a touring car, with the brave at the wheel!
"Gee whiz, times change all right," said Spider. "Even the Indians have automobiles."
Nearly a hundred Blackfeet arrived, all told, fine looking men and women for the most part, although the older squaws were fat and huddled up in their blankets, looking like funny bears. What struck Joe and Tom first of all, however, was the good nature of these Indians.
"I always thought Indians were silent and sort of grouchy," Tom said to Mills, who was on hand to help the Indians get settled in camp and see that the hotel, which had induced them to come, provided enough for them to eat.
"Not at all," the Ranger answered. "They are always laughing and joking, as you see. They are a very happy people, and they have a mighty hard time of it, too. They don"t know how to raise cattle or grain, because they"ve always been hunters. Now the government has taken the Park away from them, and won"t let "em hunt here, and they half starve every winter. I tell you, I"m sorry for "em."
The boys moved among them freely, listening to their strange language, and watching the tepees go up. Some of these tepees were made of tanned skins, mostly elk skins, but one or two very old ones of buffalo skins.
They were stretched around a frame of lodge-pole pines, leaving a hole at the peak where the smoke could rise, as through a chimney. On the outside were painted in various colors bands and designs, and in the case of the chiefs, funny figures of buffalo and men chasing them on horseback, and other men being killed in battle. These pictures, Mills said, were painted by the chiefs themselves, and depicted the life history and exploits of each warrior.
"Good idea," Tom laughed. "You sort of paint your autobiography on the outside of your house."
"I suppose when you get home, you"ll draw a picture of yourself climbing a cliff, over your front door," said Joe.
"And you can draw yourself falling down the cellar hatchway," Tom retorted.
By late afternoon, the tepees were all up, smoke was ascending from the peaks, the horses of each brave were tethered near their master"s lodge, in the centre of the camp was a large, flat open s.p.a.ce, to be used later for the dances, and here the little Indian children were now playing.
When the flap of a lodge was lifted, you could see women inside, cooking or laying beds of skins and blankets. The funny Indian dogs, mongrels of all shapes, sizes and colors, were roaming around. Beside the camp flowed the Swift Current, green and foaming, and behind it rose the towering walls of the canon sides. Except for the tourists who had come down from the hotel to watch, and the one Indian automobile parked near by, the camp might have been an Indian village of two hundred years ago, before the white men ever came. Tom and Joe were reluctant to leave, it all seemed so like a picture out of the past, the picture of a life and a race now fast vanishing from the earth. They took many pictures of the camp before they finally went back to their own camp, to see if any hikers had arrived.
A party was coming down the trail just as they got there, and Tom was soon busy. But when supper was over, he and Joe went back, taking the hikers along, to see the camp again. As they drew near, they heard strange noises, the TuM-_tum_, TuM-_tum_, of Indian drums. The pow-wow had begun.
"It won"t amount to much, though, till to-morrow," Mills said. "They just get worked up a little to-night."
There was a big fire going in the central dancing ground, and near it, dressed in all their finery, two of them stripped bare to the waist with their skins covered with yellow paint, were the three makers of music, each holding a shallow skin drum in one hand and beating it with the other, in a regular, monotonous, unvaried rhythm, a two-foot beat, heavily accented on the first foot--TuM-_tum_, TuM-_tum_, TuM-_tum_, over and over, rather slowly. As they pounded out this rhythm, they kept laughing, emitting yells and calls, and sometimes sang. Meanwhile some boy or young brave would spring out into the fire-light, in the centre of the ring of braves and squaws and children squatted or standing around, and dance to the music, going through strange gestures, brandishing a decorated spear, stooping, bending, circling around, but always, the boys soon detected, adhering to some formal plan, although they didn"t know what this dance might signify, and always surprisingly graceful.
"Some of those dances are very intricate," Mills said to them, as an Indian boy, after finishing a hard dance, dropped panting back into the circle, while the older braves applauded and another took his place instantly. "It takes a boy weeks to learn them, and each one has a meaning. It may be the boy"s medicine dance, part of the ritual which will keep harm away from him."
Even after the scouts left, they could hear the TuM-_tum_ of the drums, till the roar of the falls drowned it. The next day they hurried back, as soon as the camp work was done, and found the Indians dancing again, in broad daylight now, of course, with a great crowd of tourists around watching them. They were still at it when the boys came back after luncheon, seemingly untiring. But presently they stopped, and an old chief stepped out and began to make a speech.
"What"s he talking about?" Tom asked Mills, edging in close to the circle.
"Don"t ask me--I can"t talk the language," the Ranger answered. "Hi, Pete, what"s old Stabs-by-Mistake saying?"
This last question was addressed to a half-breed who was standing just in front of them, in the Indian circle.
Pete, who was dressed in cowboy costume, but without any hat, turned with a grin.
"He says they are going to take my white man name away from me, and give me a Blackfeet name," Pete replied. "He says the white men give the mountains foolish white man names, but I"m part Indian, and they"re going to take my name, Pete Jones, away from me."