John Ermine of the Yellowstone (27 page)

The mountain boy had brought little to the soldier camp but the qualities of mind which distinguished his remote ancestors of the north of Europe, who came out of the dark forests clad in skins,
and bearing the first and final law of man, a naked sword on a knotted arm. An interval of many centuries intervened between him and his fellows; all the race had evolved, all the laws which they
had made for the government of society, all the subtle customs which experience had decreed should circumscribe associates, were to him but the hermit’s gossip in idle hours at the cabin. The
bar sinister was on his shield; his credentials were the advice of an unreal person to fight in common with the whites. He came clad in skins on a naked horse, and could barely understand English
when it was in the last adulteration; and still he had made his way without stumbling until the fatal evening. Now he was fleeing for life because he had done two of the most natural things which a
man can do.

“Goodbye, goodbye, white men, and goodbye, white woman; the frost is in your hearts, and your blood runs like the melting snow from the hills. When you smile, you only skin your fangs; and
when you laugh, your eyes do not laugh with you. You say good words which mean nothing. You stroke a man’s back as a boy does a dog’s, and kick him later as a boy does. You, woman, you
who pick men’s hearts and eat them as a squaw does wild plums, I want no more of you. You, Butler, I wish were out here in the dark with me; one of us would never see the sun rise. You would
force me!” and the scout vented himself in a hollow laugh which was chill with murder.

The lights were lost behind the rise of the land, and the pony trotted along. No horse or man not raised on the buffalo range could travel in that darkness; but both of them made steady
progress.

“Those Indians will have to crawl on their knees a whole day to pick up my pony tracks on the hard ground. The Crows will never try to follow me; the Shoshone may when the white men offer
a reward. That fool of a boy may see his chance to even up the insult which I gave before the woman. He can shake her hand now for all I would do. I will ride for two hours before the sun comes,
and then let the pony feed.”

Patting his horse’s neck, he added: “And then, my boy, we will blind our trail in some creek. I will rub the medicine on your heels, you shall gallop until dark, and no horse in that
camp will get near enough to spoil my sleep.”

Keeping along the river flats, floundering occasionally and dismounting to lead through the dry washes, he kept steadily on, impelled by the fear that the Indian scouts and cavalry might not
stop for his trail, but deploy out at daybreak, and ride fast to the west, in the hopes that he had not yet made a long start in the darkness. There was only the danger that his horse might lame
himself in the night; but then he could go back in the hills and make a skulk on foot. Even to be brought to bay had no great terror; Ermine held his life lightly in the hollow of his hand.

He mused as he rode: “They took my hair out of the braids and let it flow in the wind; then they said I was a white man. I may be one; but I wish now I had forgotten my color and I would
not be so empty-handed this night. If I had followed my Indian heart, I could have stolen that girl out from under the noses of those soldiers, and I may do it yet. When she was riding, I could
have taken her away from the hunting-party, rawhided her on to her horse, and left no more sign than a bird behind us; but when she looked at me, my blood turned to water. O Sak-a-war-te, why did
you not take the snake’s gaze out of her eyes, and not let poor Ermine sit like a gopher to be swallowed? God, God, have you deserted me?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

F
LIGHT

E
RMINE UNDERSTOOD THE
“talking wire,” the telegraph had been made plain to him—and he knew the soldiers were stretching one into the
west. He sheered away from the white man’s medicine, going up a creek where only the silent waters swirling about his horse’s legs could know the story of his ride, which secret they
would carry to the eternal sea.

The gallant pony’s blood was rich from the grain-sacks; he had carried a rider in the strain of many war-trails, and his heart had not yet failed. In the prime of life, he was now asked to
do the long, quick distance that should lose the white man; those mighty people who bought the help of mercenary men; whose inexhaustible food came in the everlasting wagons; and who spoke to each
other twenty sleeps apart. His rider had violated their laws, and they would have him. Only the pony could save.

Having walked the bed of the creek as far as he deemed necessary, Ermine backed his pony out of the stream into some low bushes, where he turned him about and rode away. All day over the yellow
plains and through the defiles of the hills loped the fugitive. Once having seen buffalo coming in his direction, he travelled for miles along a buffalo path which he judged they would follow. If
by fortune they did, he knew it would make the scouts who came after rub their eyes and smoke many pipes in embarrassment. Not entirely satisfied with his precautions—for he thought the
Indians would cast ahead when checked—he continued to urge the pony steadily forward. The long miles which lay before his pursuers would make their hearts weak and their ponies’
forelegs wobble.

He reflected that since he was indeed going to join Mr. Harding’s party at the secret place in Gap-full-of-arrow-holes, why would not Lewis’ scouts follow the easy trail made by
their ponies and trust to finding him with them; and again, would the Englishman want his company under his altered status? This he answered by saying that no horse in the cantonment could eat up
the ground with his war-pony; and as for the Englishman, he could not know of the late tragedy unless the accused chose to tell him. What of his word? Why was he keeping it? With a quick bullet
from his rifle had gone his honor, along with other things more material. Still, the Gap lay in his way, so he could stop without inconvenience, at least long enough for a cup of coffee and some
tobacco. The suddenness of his departure had left him no time to gather the most simple necessities, and he was living by his gun. Only once did he see Indians far away in the shimmer of the
plains. He had dropped into the dry washes and sneaked away. They might be Crows, but the arrows of doubt made sad surgery in his poor brain; the spell of the white man’s vengeance was over
him. Their arms were long, their purses heavy; they could turn the world against him. From their strong log-towns they would conjure his undoing by the devious methods which his experience with
them had taught him to dread. The strain of his thoughts made his head ache as he cast up the events which had forced him to this wolfing through the lonely desert. He had wanted to marry a pretty
girl whose eyes had challenged him to come on, and when he had ventured them, like a mountain storm the whole cantonment rattled about his head and shot its bolts to kill. As the girl had fled his
presence at the mere extension of his hand, in swift response to her emotions the whole combination of white humanity was hard on the heels of his flying pony.

From the summit of the red cliffs Ermine looked down into the secret valley of his quest, and sitting there beside a huge boulder he studied the rendezvous. There were
Ramon’s pack-ponies—he remembered them all. There curled the smoke from the tangle of brushwood in the bottom, and finally Wolf-Voice and Ramon came out to gather in the horses for the
night. He rode down toward them. Their quick ears caught the sound of the rattle of the stones loosened by his mount, and they stopped. He waved his hat, and they recognized him. He came up and
dismounted from his drooping horse, stiff-hided with lather and dust, hollow-flanked, and with his belly drawn up as tight as the head of a tom-tom.

“Are you alone in the camp? Has no one been here?”

“No; what for waas any one been here?” asked and answered the half-breed. “De King George Man, she waas set by dose fire an’ waas ask me ’bout once a minit when
waas Ermine come.”

The men drove the horses in while Ermine made his way through the brush to the campfire.

“Aha! Glad to see you, Mr. Ermine. Gad! But you must have put your horse through. He is barely holding together in the middle. Picket him out, and we will soon have some coffee
going.”

Ermine did as directed and was soon squatting before the fire with his cup and plate. To the hail of questions he made brief response, which Harding attributed to fatigue and the inclination of
these half-wild men not to mix discourse with the more serious matter of eating.

“How did you leave every one at the camp?”

Ermine borrowed a pipe and interspersed his answers with puffs.

“Left them in the night—and they were all sitting up to see me off. My pony is weak, Mr. Harding. Will you give me a fresh one in the morning? We ought to start before daylight and
make a long day of it.”

“My dear man, before daylight? Are we in such haste? It seems that we have time enough before us.”

“This is a bad country here. Indians of all tribes are coming and going. We are better off back in the range. In two or three sleeps we will be where we can lie on the robe, but not
here”; saying which, Ermine rolled up in his saddle blanket, and perforce the others did likewise, in view of the short hours in store.

The last rasping, straining pack-rope had been laid while yet the ghostly light played softly with the obscurity of the morning. The ponies were forced forward, crashing through the bushes,
floundering in the creek, cheered on by hoarse oaths, all strange to the ear of Harding. The sedate progression of other days was changed to a fox-trot—riding-whips and trail-ropes slapping
about the close-hugged tails of the horses.

Harding congratulated himself on the unexpected energy of his guide; it would produce results later when wanted in the hunting. The ponies strung out ahead to escape the persecution of the lash,
but Wolf-Voice saw something new in it all, and as he rode, his fierce little eyes gleamed steadily on Ermine. The half-breed knew the value of time when he was pushing the horses of the enemy away
from their lodges, but these horses had no other masters. He turned his pony alongside of Ermine’s.

“Say, John, what for you waas keep look behin’? Who you ’fraid follar dese pony? Ain’t dose Canada-man pay for dese pony—sacre, what you was do back de camp dare?
De Sioux, she broke hout?” And the half-breed’s mischievous eye settled well on his confrère.

“Well, I did that back there which will make the high hills safer for me than any other place. Don’t say anything to Mr. Harding until I feel safe. I want to think.”

“You waas shoot some one, mabeso?”

“Yes—that————Butler. He said he would force me to give up the paper we found in the moonlight on the soldier trail down the Yellowstone a year ago. He pulled
his pistol, and I shot him.”

“You kiell heem—hey?”

“No, caught him in the arm, but it will not kill him. I may go back and do that—when the soldiers forget a little.”

“Den you waas run away—hey?”

“Yes; I made the grass smoke from Tongue River to here. I don’t think they can follow me, but they may follow this party. That’s why I look behind, Wolf-Voice, and that’s
why I want you to look behind.”