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Still White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it. The gods were all- wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless piece of meat. In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously related.
All at once there the Indians were, as if the canal-boats had dropped with them out of heaven. There they were, crowding the decks, in their blankets and moccasins, braves and squaws and pappooses, standing about or squatting in groups, not saying anything, and looking exactly like the pictures.
"They's mighty few white men takes the trouble to look, but the Indians used to know. They'd come canoein' an' fishin' down the river an' camp under these very trees, an' Ma 'ud git so mad at the old squaws. Settlers wasn't so thick then, an' you had to be mighty careful not to rile 'em, an' they'd come a-trapesin' with their wild berries. Woods full o' berries!
At any rate he crossed his wounded men over the river in canoes to the cabin held by the party of stock men, and mounting his men went six miles up the river to the ford and put the river between himself and command and danger. As soon as the squaws and children reached the men, a party headed by "Black Jim" mounted and started down the shores of the lake butchering the settlers.
Of what followed his ears and eyes took note. "You look very brave just now," said the Blackfoot leader, "but I will make you change your looks before I take your scalps to dry in the Blackfoot wigwams." "You had better take our lives at once," said Big Tim fiercely, "else we will begin to think that we have had the mischance to fall into the hands of cowardly squaws."
When he was fat enough, they bound him to a cross in the presence of the multitude, danced a solemn dance, then cleft his head with a tomahawk and shot him with arrows. According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the victim's body, with which they greased their hoes; but this was denied by another trader who had been present at the ceremony.
The little village where he lived contained fewer than one hundred inhabitants. Everybody was thoroughly acquainted with everybody else. There was no society such as we have to-day. Philip's squaw did not dress herself up in the afternoon, and make calls on the other squaws. If she wished to talk with them she went where they were, whether it was morning, afternoon, or evening.
It was very still in there; not even the cry of a jay or the drum of a woodpecker to break the silence, until suddenly I heard voices. Then, in a tangle of young alder, I picked up a trail and came soon on a group of squaws picking wild blackberries.
When over sky-line hulks the last great form And the rumbling thunder of their hoofs' beat, beat, Dies like an echo in distant hills, Back ride the hunters chanting their feat. Now, old men and squaws, come you out with the carts! There's meat against hunger and fur against cold! Gather full store for the pemmican bags, Garner the booty of warriors bold.
My companion and I both noted, and spoke together of the fact, that they all seemed braves; squaws there may have been, but of children there were none visible. Populous as this camp appeared, the plain stretching between it and us was literally swarming with savages.
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