Brave, honest old Ah-ta-to-yi (The Fox), as the Blackfeet and frontiers-men loved to call him! We buried him on a high bluff overlooking the valley of the Two Medicine River, and close up to the foothills of the Rockies, the "backbone-of-the-world" that he loved so well. After we had filled in the grave and the others had gone, Pitamakan and I sat by the new-made mound until the setting sun and the increasing cold warned us also to descend into the valley. The old chief was crying as we mounted our horses.
"Although of white skin," he faltered, "the man who lies there was my brother. I doubt not that I shall soon meet him in the Sand-hills."
THE SHALE BEGAN SLIDING UNDER MY FEET (page 51) _Frontispiece_ IT TOPPLED OVER WITH A CRASH AND LAY STILL 14 AGAIN AND AGAIN IT ROSE 76 PITAMAKAN FIERCELY STRIKING A BLOW 128 THE AVALANCHE BURST INTO THE FLAT 200 I GRABBED THEM UP AND FOLLOWED HIM 210
_Reproduced from drawings by George Varian, by permission of The Youth's Companion._
My father kept a little firearm shop in St. Louis. Over it was the sign:----
DAVID FOX & Co. Wholesale & Retail Guns & Ammunition. Fine Rifles & Fowling Pieces Made To Order.
"Co." on the sign stood for my uncle, Wesley Fox, who was a silent partner in the business. Longer than I could remember, he had been an employee of the American Fur Company away up the Missouri River.
It was a great event in the quiet life of our little family of three when he came, as he did every two or three years, to pay us a short visit. He no sooner set foot in the house than my mother began to cook bread, cakes, puddings and pies. I have seen him make what he called a delicious breakfast on nothing but buttered toast and coffee. That was because he did not get any bread where he lived except on Christmas Day. Every pound of freight that went up the river above Fort Union in the company's keel-boats and bateaux was for the Indian trade, and there was no room for such luxuries as flour.
While Uncle Wesley was with us, mother always let me put away my books, and not say any lessons to her, and I went with him everywhere in the town. That is what St. Louis was in those days--just a good-sized town. I liked best to go with him to the levee and see the trappers and traders coming in, their bateaux loaded down with beaver and other fur pelts. Nearly all these men wore buckskin clothes and moccasins, and fur caps of their own make. They all had long hair and big whiskers and mustaches that looked as if they had been trimmed with a butcher-knife.