meant. These, my Blackfeet, had been the
great buffalo-hunters. With bow and arrow they had followed the herds
from Canada to the Far South. These chiefs had been mighty hunters. But
for many years not a single buffalo had their eyes beheld. They who had
lived by the buffalo were now dying with them. A few full-bloods shut
away on a reservation, a few buffalo penned in a corral--children of the
open spaces and of freedom, both of them, and now dying and imprisoned.
For the Blackfeet are a dying people.

They had come to see the buffalo.

But they did not say so. An Indian is a stoic. He has both imagination
and sentiment, but the latter he conceals. And this was the explanation
they gave me for the Indian agent:--

I knew that, back in my home, when a friend asked me to come to an
entertainment, I must go or that friend would be offended with me. And
so it was with the Blackfeet Indians--they had been invited to this
round-up, and they felt that they should come or they would hurt the
feelings of those who had asked them. Therefore, would I, Pi-ta-mak-an,
go to the Indian agent and make their peace for them? For, after all,
summer was short and winter was coming. The old would need their
ration-tickets again. And they, the braves, would promise to go back to
the Reservation and get in the hay, and be all that good Indians should
be.

And I, too, was as good an Indian as I knew how to be, for I scolded
them all roundly and then sat down at the first possible opportunity and
wrote to the agent.

And the agent? He is a very wise and kindly man, facing one of the
biggest problems in our country. He gave them back their ration-tickets
and wiped the slate clean, to the eternal credit of a Government that
has not often to the Indian tempered justice with mercy.

X

OFF FOR CASCADE PASS

How many secrets the mountains hold! They have forgotten things we shall
never know. And they are cruel, savagely cruel. What they want, they
take. They reach out a thousand clutching hands. They attack with
avalanche, starvation, loneliness, precipice. They lure on with green
valleys and high flowering meadows where mountain-sheep move sedately,
with sunlit peaks and hidden lakes, with silence for tired ears and
peace for weary souls. And then--they kill.

Because man is a fighting animal, he obeys their call, his wit against
their wisdom of the ages, his strength against their solidity, his
courage against their cunning.