Days passed. All the time, in light and dark, the Indians filled the air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great Spirit, and the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific feature of their wild prayer for food.
But the white monotony of the rolling land and level lake remained unbroken. The reindeer did not come. The days became shorter, dimmer, darker. The mercury kept on the slide.
Forty degrees below zero did not trouble the Indians. They stamped till they dropped, and sang till their voices vanished, and beat the tomtoms everlastingly. Jones fed the children once each day, against the trapper’s advice.
One day, while Rea was absent, a dozen braves succeeded in forcing an entrance, and clamored so fiercely, and threatened so desperately, that Jones was on the point of giving them food when the door opened to admit Rea.
With a glance he saw the situation. He dropped the bucket he carried, threw the door wide open and commenced action. Because of his great bulk he seemed slow, but every blow of his sledge-hammer fist knocked a brave against the wall, or through the door into the snow. When he could reach two savages at once, by way of diversion, he swung their heads together with a crack. They dropped like dead things. Then he handled them as if they were sacks of corn, pitching them out into the snow. In two minutes the cabin was clear. He banged the door and slipped the bar in place.
“Buff, I’m goin’ to get mad at these thievin’ red, skins some day,” he said gruffly. The expanse of his chest heaved slightly, like the slow swell of a calm ocean, but there was no other indication of unusual exertion.
Jones laughed, and again gave thanks for the comradeship of this strange man.
Shortly afterward, he went out for wood, and as usual scanned the expanse of the lake. The sun shone mistier and warmer, and frost feathers floated in the air. Sky and sun and plain and lake—all were gray. Jones fancied he saw a distant moving mass of darker shade than the gray background. He called the trapper.
“Caribou,” said Rea instantly. “The vanguard of the migration. Hear the Indians! Hear their cry: “Aton! Aton!” they mean reindeer. The idiots have scared the herd with their infernal racket, an’ no meat will they get. The caribou will keep to the ice, an’ man or Indian can’t stalk them there.”
For a few moments his companion surveyed the lake and shore with a plainsman’s eye, then dashed within, to reappear with a Winchester in each hand. Through the crowd of bewailing, bemoaning Indians; he sped, to the low, dying bank. The hard crust of snow upheld him. The gray cloud was a thousand yards out upon the lake and moving southeast. If the caribou did not swerve from this course they would pass close to a projecting point of land, a half-mile up the lake. So, keeping a wary eye upon them, the hunter ran swiftly. He had not hunted antelope and buffalo on the plains all his life without learning how to approach moving game. As long as the caribou were in action, they could not tell whether he moved or was motionless. In order to tell if an object was inanimate or not, they must stop to see, of which fact the keen hunter took advantage. Suddenly he saw the gray mass slow down and bunch up. He stopped running, to stand like a stump. When the reindeer moved again, he moved, and when they slackened again, he stopped and became motionless. As they kept to their course, he worked gradually closer and closer. Soon he distinguished gray, bobbing heads. When the leader showed signs of halting in his slow trot the hunter again became a statue. He saw they were easy to deceive; and, daringly confident of success, he encroached on the ice and closed up the gap till not more than two hundred yards separated him from the gray, bobbing, antlered mass.
Jones dropped on one knee. A moment only his eyes lingered admiringly on the wild and beautiful spectacle; then he swept one of the rifles to a level. Old habit made the little beaded sight cover first the stately leader. Bang! The gray monarch leaped straight forward, forehoofs up, antlered head back, to fall dead with a crash. Then for a few moments the Winchester spat a deadly stream of fire, and when emptied was thrown down for the other gun, which in the steady, sure hands of the hunter belched death to the caribou.
The herd rushed on, leaving the white surface of the lake gray with a struggling, kicking, bellowing heap. When Jones reached the caribou he saw several trying to rise on crippled legs. With his knife he killed these, not without some hazard to himself. Most of the fallen ones were already dead, and the others soon lay still. Beautiful gray creatures they were, almost white, with wide-reaching, symmetrical horns.
A medley of yells arose from the shore, and Rea appeared running with two sleds, with the whole tribe of Yellow Knives pouring out of the forest behind him.
“Buff, you’re jest what old Jim said you was,” thundered Rea, as he surveyed the gray pile. “Here’s winter meat, an’ I’d not have given a biscuit for all the meat I thought you’d get.”
“Thirty shots in less than thirty seconds,” said Jones, “An’ I’ll bet every ball I sent touched hair. How many reindeer?”
“Twenty! twenty! Buff, or I’ve forgot how to count. I guess mebbe you can’t handle them shootin’ arms. Ho! here comes the howlin’ redskins.”
Rea whipped out a bowie knife and began disemboweling the reindeer. He had not proceeded far in his task when the crazed savages were around him. Every one carried a basket or receptacle, which he swung aloft, and they sang, prayed, rejoiced on their knees. Jones turned away from the sickening scenes that convinced him these savages were little better than cannibals. Rea cursed them, and tumbled them over, and threatened them with the big bowie. An altercation ensued, heated on his side, frenzied on theirs. Thinking some treachery might befall his comrade, Jones ran into the thick of the group.
“Share with them, Rea, share with them.”
Whereupon the giant hauled out ten smoking carcasses. Bursting into a babel of savage glee and tumbling over one another, the Indians pulled the caribou to the shore.
“Thievin’ fools,” growled Rea, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Said they’d prevailed on the Great Spirit to send the reindeer. Why, they’d never smelled warm meat but for you. Now, Buff, they’ll gorge every hair, hide an’ hoof of their share in less than a week. Thet’s the last we do for the damned cannibals. Didn’t you see them eatin’ of the raw innards?—faugh! I’m calculatin’ we’ll see no more reindeer. It’s late for the migration. The big herd has driven southward. But we’re lucky, thanks to your prairie trainin’. Come on now with the sleds, or we’ll have a pack of wolves to fight.”
By loading three reindeer on each sled, the hunters were not long in transporting them to the cabin. “Buff, there ain’t much doubt about them keepin’ nice and cool,” said Rea. “They’ll freeze, an’ we can skin them when we want.”
That night the starved wolf dogs gorged themselves till they could not rise from the snow. Likewise the Yellow Knives feasted. How long the ten reindeer might have served the wasteful tribe, Rea and Jones never found out. The next day two Indians arrived with dog-trains, and their advent was hailed with another feast, and a pow-wow that lasted into the night.
“Guess we’re goin’ to get rid of our blasted hungry neighbors,” said Rea, coming in next morning with the water pail, “An’ I’ll be durned, Buff, if I don’t believe them crazy heathen have been told about you. Them Indians was messengers. Grab your gun, an’ let’s walk over and see.”
The Yellow Knives were breaking camp, and the hunters were at once conscious of the difference in their bearing. Rea addressed several braves, but got no reply. He laid his broad hand on the old wrinkled chief, who repulsed him, and turned his back. With a growl, the trapper spun the Indian round, and spoke as many words of the language as he knew. He got a cold response, which ended in the ragged old chief starting up, stretching a long, dark arm northward, and with eyes fixed in fanatical subjection, shouting: “Naza! Naza! Naza!”
“Heathen!” Rea shook his gun in the faces of the messengers. “It’ll go bad with you to come Nazain’ any longer on our trail.