Claws of the Thunderbird

Front matter

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— q

CLAWS

Chapter One

“This is no life for a Chippewa warrior!’’ ejaculated Olah while laboring under two birch buckets of maple sap. The pole across his shoulders hurt a little, and no self-respecting Indian lad, twelve or more, enjoys toil supposed to be done by girls. “I don’t like this work!” he finished.

“Nor do I,’ replied Bopo, his cousin and best friend, scuffing through the March snow from tree to tree. Three days before, they had eagerly assisted at the gashing of the trunks, the fitting of the bark cups beneath each gash, and the cutting and hauling of wood to keep the huge clay pots bubbling. They had been first of the sugar camp to pour a ladleful of the thick syrup, sputtering on the white snow, to cool into candy, and much of the first golden sugar went, not into the bark makaks for storage, but into their mouths. However, the second day had seen them rather slow to eat much of it, and now the very thought of sugar, syrup, or sap made them ill. Moreover, now that they had been more than satisfied, the prospect of a continual grind of woodcutting and sap-carrying did not at all appeal.

“There are a dozen children to do this work,” continued Bopo, pointing to where small forms clad in yellow buckskin romped among the bare tree trunks, ‘‘and no need of grown fellows like us. Magpie there can oversee them. Let’s go squirrel hunting!”

“It does stand to reason that Magpie could do our work,’’ agreed Olah, letting the buckets down carefully and rubbing his shoulder. ‘She isn’t half out of breath with what she does do. She can talk a green streak while she gathers sap, and if she didn’t waste so much breath she could do twice as much work. It really is criminal for us to listen to her.”

“Come on, let’s go squirrel hunting!’’ tempted. Bopo once more. “I saw three plump ones all in one tree, and that’s good medicine!”’

“They really wouldn’t miss us,” agreed Olah, thoughtful again, “but what of Aunt Otter Woman? It might be bad medicine to sneak out after she told us not to go hunting. You know what she said this morning.”’

“Oh, yes, I know! She and Pine Cone are forever telling us that tale about the terrible Bwanoz, the Sioux, being in the sugar territory at this time. I know it by heart. Pine Cone lost her husband and papoose, one spring at the sugar camp, and she’s been nearly a crazy woman ever since. And this year all the Chippewa men are away on the fur hunt, and we are the only protectors of the camp, and so on and so on. But that’s the way with Aunt Otter Woman, always afraid, just like a woman. J don’t think there are any Bwanoz within a hundred miles of here, and anyway we wouldn’t be gone long. Just a little hunt wouldn’t hurt.”

“Well, maybe just a little hunt wouldn’t be very bad,” said Olah relenting. ‘‘Just a little hunt, say over that ridge and down the swamp. But we’ll have a time of it, sneaking our bows out the back way.”

So into the wig-was-igamig, the high birch bark wigwain, they walked, setting their buckets in line | / near the huge earthen pot | 7 bubbling inthe center. They |~ | said nothing, and passed out the back way with empty buckets on their poles, but as they passed the rack _.’ of personal belongings they deftly unhooked their bows and quivers. Pine Cone and Otter Woman were stirring the boiling sap, their faces clouded with steam, and the other women did not notice the boys, who let the rush mat flap back across the door with a sigh of relief. But, bad medicine! Magpie was there! “Aha!” she cried, eyeing the bows, ‘‘so you’re going to play hookey, and the sap not half gathered, and all that, and all! You’re running away, and after what your aunt told you! I am going to tell her, I am, and then you just see what will happen 2

“Oh, go on and tell!” called Bopo. ‘‘Go on and tattle! But you can’t stop us!” and the two boys began to run. They could hear Magpie’s shrill voice from the lodge—“‘and they are going hunting, and—”’ but with an extra spurt they were over the hill and out of sight and sound of camp.

“Ugh!” puffed Bopo, out of breath, “how these women bore me! They’re good for nothing but talk! If a dog wagged his tail as much as Magpie wags her tongue, he’d come apart in an hour!”? To which Olah agreed.

By this time they were well out of the maple thicket and trotting into thick fir timber.

‘“‘Wagh! Neechee, this is a wonderful day!” cried Olah, throwing back his shoulders and squinting through the drooping branches of a balsam fir. ‘And they said, this morning, that this sun was only a pretense, that we should have a blizzard!”

‘Another old woman’s tale,” said Bopo in disgust. ‘‘Always gloomy, always afraid! But let’s forget the camp. Ho! there goes a Plume-Tail!” and he pointed to where, lippity-lippit, across the soft white, a small red body bounded toward a thick spruce. Both boys ran after him.

Bopo spotted him first, a mere wisp of tail-fluff against a dark limb. He aimed a blunt arrow but it missed, struck the tree trunk and bounded back into the snow. The squirrel ran out on the fuzzy balsam twigs to scold the two-legged animals below, and this left his white stomach exposed, a good mark. It being Olah’s turn now, he pulled his bowstring to his chest and let fly. With a soft swish the arrow lifted into the darkness of the tree swiftly, and caught the squirrel fairly in the chest. He never knew what had hit him, and felt no pain. His spirit probably continued the chattering in the Happy Hunting Ground, but his red fluffy body came tumbling down to land with a soft thud between the two fallen arrows.

‘““Nezesheen, good!’’ cried Bopo. “You win! a very pretty shot.”

“Oh, go on and tell!” called Bopo.

“Yes,”’ agreed Olah, “it was my best blunt arrow, and didn’t break the skin. I shall save and tan the fur, but his tail belongs to his spirit.” So he drew a copper sheath knife, severed the bushy plume and hung it on a twig. ‘There! Now he can be happy in the spirit world,” finished the hunter, drying his arrow and slipping the animal under his belt.

“Bopo,” said Olah as he looked over the forest, “I think we had best separate. This swamp has high land on each side, which the squirrels keep to, and their tracks lead everywhere like weaving a basket. The sun will bring them out. I'll take this side and you take that, and see who’ll shoot the most. We’ll meet here when the sun goes down,’ he finished, wholly forgetting that this hunt was only to be a “little one.”

“All right. Then we can go the two miles back to camp in a hurry,’’ assented Bopo. “Til bet my best arrow that I win!”

“You’re on,’”’ laughed his friend, ‘‘my best arrow you don’t,” and away they went.

Olah ploughed through the snow, his moccasins leaving little ridges with each step. He saw a windfall where three large balsams had been uprooted in a storm, their trunks locking to form a tangle of thick green. Squirming into it, he waited a moment and, sure enough, there was a squirrel sunning himself on a bough. Spat! went his bowcord again, and he had doubled his kill.

On again into higher ground he missed two squirrels in succession, then he shot three. He wounded a partridge and ran over logs and through deep snow for some time to get a finishing shot. More squirrels again until he had eight at his belt. Then suddenly his good hunting stopped. And though he walked and circled, and crossed rabbit runways and squirrel paths, no more game did he see. Another half hour passed, and no more luck. Finally he paused abruptly and looked at the heavens.

“It’s funny, but I haven’t seen the sun for some time,’? he thought. ‘“That’s why the Plume-Tails are not out any more. I hadn’t noticed it, but the air is much colder, the sky has all gone grey. Perhaps I had best call it a day and go back to Bopo.”

So, shouldering his partridge, he began ‘to retrace his steps. As he neared the swamp, a huge shadowy thing fell softly out of a dead pine and drifted silently across his trail into the dense gloom of the forest.

“Ugh!” exclaimed Olah, stopping so short that the partridge jerked loose from his grip and dropped into the snow. ‘Bad medicine! The Drum-Eyed One, the Great Owl!” he breathed, as he picked up the partridge again and dusted the snow out of its feathers. “I wonder what is going to happen now?”

The sky grew suddenly darker and, as he hurried his steps to a trot, several white flakes drifted against the yellow buckskin of his sleeve.

“Snow!”? he thought in consternation. ‘They were right, the old women at camp, after all!’ and he hurried on, calling, ‘‘Yoo-hoo-00, Bo-Po-o-o!? But, call as he might, there was only silence. He began to run, swiftly now and with no pauses, leaping ae the underbrush and fallen logs like a frightened deer. Keeping his old trail in one corner of his eye, he watched the dark forest growing darker with the other. In and out like a shuttle he sped among the trunks. But just so surely as he was coming to the meeting place, just so surely were his tracks filling with large, feathery flakes. The air was freckled with white. He ran faster, and plunged recklessly into a tangle of brush. His strung bow caught on a branch and down he went in a smother, squirrels, arrows and the plump partridge.

“Ugh!” he exclaimed aloud. ‘I am as skittish as a girl! It serves me right. I must go slower!”

“Tl tell the woods you must,” said a voice beside him, and there was Bopo, his eyes wide. “You act scared!’’

“Well, you’ve been running yourself!’’ retorted Olah, glancing at the wide nostrils and heaving chest of the other. ‘‘Why did you run?”

“Wagh! Why? It looks like a blizzard to me,” puffed Bopo. ‘‘The trail’s filled up with snow. We can’t see two yards ahead, and we’d never make the sugar camp in this! Besides—I saw a wolf!”

“A wolf?” exclaimed Olah, picking himself out of the tangle of branches still clinging to his legging fringe.

“A wolf and the tracks of five others,” replied Bopo, furtively glancing into the shadows. “But that’s not all—I’ll tell you something else later.”

“Wolves! grunted Olah. ‘“‘They’re hungry this spring. My father once said he saw where they had attacked a sleeping man—and Bopo! I saw the Drum-Eyed One, the Great Owl!’’ he whispered above the noise of the wind. ‘‘He soared right across my trail, almost touching! And that’s bad medicine!”

The two boys crowded together in the snow and peered into the thick blanket of falling feathers. It was not a brilliant thought, this being shut off from camp in the forest, and night almost on them. At last Olah cleared his throat.

‘Well, we must make the best of it like true men,’ he said with a firmness he did not feel. ‘‘We’re in for a night of it, and we need shelter and a fire. There’s a balsam back there in the hollow where I shot a squirrel. The windfall would be a good break from the wind, and there are plenty of dead branches for the fire. Have you your rubbing sticks?”

‘Always carry them in my quiver,’’ said Bopo. “Let’s run for it.”

Out of the wind in the thick tangle, Bopo produced his fire-drill, and with a pinch of cedar tinder from his pouch, soon had a blaze. They built a pyramid with sticks, and in no time a lively fire was crackling merrily.

“Great stuff, Neechee!’’ grinned Olah, beginning y to skin one of the squirrels and feeling more cheerful. ‘A little food and we shall feel better. I feel much better already.” .

“But I don’t feel so well, myself,’ said Bopo, pulling feathers and skin from the grouse and gazing moodily into the fire. ‘‘Perhaps we were too hasty, this morning, when we went out against Aunt Otter Woman’s warning. You know, she has quite a lot of sense fora woman. She foretold that flood on the Great River, you know, and warned our fathers not to go. If she hadn’t been taking care of both of us babies at the time, we should have drowned with our families. And it was only last week that she had a dream, you remember, and saw a blizzard, and then burned grass, and then she saw the Thunderbird!” “Yes, I know,” assented Olah, looking over his

shoulder from time to time into the darkness. ‘She said that he held black clouds in his wings, and his claws—it was his claws that she was frightened about, Neechee! She said they were dripping blood. But then the dog howled, and she woke up, and couldn’t figure it out at all.”

‘Well, I saw something besides the wolves’ tracks back there in the snow,” said Bopo. “I saw a large track, just one, like a big bird, and there was blood where the claws were! But it wasn’t an eagle! Do you suppose, Olah, that the Thunderbird has something to do with this storm?”

“Oh, no!’ said Olah quickly, ‘the sends only the rain. And this is a blizzard!’ But his words seemed rather hollow, even to himself.

For a moment they both listened. The forest creaked and groaned all around them. Fitful gusts Shook their puny shelter as though some demon sought entrance. And suddenly, above the moan of the balsams, a long-drawn note rose somewhere out of the blackness, fell, and died away in the wind. Olah shivered, and Bopo gasped, “‘A wolf!”

CHAPTER TWO Again it sounded, now more distinctly

The two boys sat huddled together as though made of one block of ice. For the wail they had just heard was not the wail of a wolf, nor of any animal! It was something far more hideous. It rose and eddied through the bleak forest like the ghost of something long dead. Then silence. But now the sighing of fir branches was the gasping of demons, ghastly formless demons clinging to the upper darkness and whispering over their prey. And the fire, which had crackled so merrily a few short moments ago, was now a gruesome spirit gnawing bones.

‘‘What—what is it?” gasped Bopo, the short hairs of his neck prickling with icy fear.

“Tt is black magic,” hissed Olah. “It is the bad medicine brought by the Drum-Eyed One!”

“Or maybe it is the Thunderbird, himself,” moaned Bopo, “coming to punish us for our rash-

A third time the cry was repeated, and this brought an answering howl, dismal and dismaying, from another direction. Soon the call came from still another quarter. The storm was filled with a bedlam of shrieks and ghoulish screams, which seemed to swirl with the snow and sweep over the drifts with the wind. Then, as suddenly as a thong is cut with a knife, they ceased altogether. And except for a few flakes still spinning in the empty air, the storm had gone, the wind chasing off through the forest like a monster running away.

“By the Chipmunk who is my totem, the weather is clearing!’ whispered Bopo. “I wonder if those things have gone?”

“T’ll sing to Mong, my Loon Father,” whispered Olah, taking a stick in his trembling hand and beating a soft rhythm against his moccasin sole. ‘But even he may be angry. We should not have gone against Aunt Otter Woman! I am afraid. But Ill sing my song.’’ And he began a chant of four notes.

“Oh Loon Father, send away the wind! Chase him into the forest, and bend the trees like brooms,

Bend the tall trees like brooms and brush away the clouds,

Brush away the Cloud-Witches and show the Moon!’ :

And before long, the darkness faded and a cold glow crept into the forest; the snow was greenishwhite with moonlight filtered between black slits of tree shadow.

“Ah! exclaimed Olah, catching his breath, ‘““Mong heard my prayer! Perhaps he is not angry. Perhaps the Thunderbird is not angry—”

‘‘Not so fast,’? hissed Bopo, “or give your totem another song quickly, because if you see what I do, we’ll need many prayers! There! Look there!” and he pointed to a dark object, squatting on the snow in the full glare of the moon.

The boys gasped in terror, for it was a Something not of this earth. Squat, without form, it moved slowly toward them, sweeping over the drifts without sound. As it neared their shelter, the trembling lads saw with horror that it had a head, a horrible head with empty sockets for eyes, and a lean jaw which slowly opened and shut with a flabby click.

This was too much. Olah got behind the fire, and Bopo reached for his bow, but it was with lagging hands. They moved as ina nightmare. Their minds were stunned, their muscles refused to work. Like helpless birds charmed by snakes, so were they charmed. The empty eye sockets held them powerless. And as they watched in horror the approach of this thing of Death, four long clawlike hands reached into their shelter from behind, and before they could resist settled in a chill grip about their throats.

Bopo felt that he was dying, if not already dead. He went over into the snow without a cry. Olah was powerless, but something made him reach out a hand above and behind him. It came in contact with a leg. Before he was dashed into the snow, he saw distinctly a buckskin legging with porcupine quill-work in triangular designs, and his brief glimpse galvanized him into action.

“Men! Bopo, Men!’ he cried, ‘Only men!” and an answering cry told him that Bopo had found out, too. They were, after all, human beings, and not shadows of the grave with whom they had to deal. So they fought with the fury of two young cubs, tooth and nail, and Bopo had the satisfaction of feeling his teeth sink deep into flesh.

_ It was soon over. The two boys lay bound on the packed snow of their shelter, and three men in gruesome paint sat ringed about. Even as they collected their thoughts, a fourth strode into the circle of light. From his shoulders flapped a loose moosehide, and on his head hung the mask with the empty eyesockets and the floppy jaws that had terrified the boys a few moments before. They all looked at the boys in merriment, and laughed. All but one, a. tall, sour-looking man with a deep scar across his entire face. He was nursing a bitten arm and his scowl was terrible to see. He bent and kicked Bopo in the ribs, robbing him of breath and leaving him squirming in pain.

“You snake!” squealed Olah, in good Chippewa, trying to get at the man with his feet, hands, anything. But a kick sent him, too, sprawling. However, by this time, a large man with a kindly face began remonstrating with the cruel one. It was a language the boys had never heard, but they gathered, by the tones, that the scar-nosed one was being lectured.

“That’s right, give it to him!” bellowed Olah. “Kicking a couple of fellows when they’re down! Just let me up and give me a tomahawk, and [’ll show him how to fight, the big moose!”

All of this, of course, got them nowhere, but the big man with the kindly face smiled at Olah’s spirit, though he could not understand the eee words. The scar-nosed one only scowled the harder, and his right lip drew back as a wolf snarls, showing the greenish teeth beneath. Olah shuddered and winced from his harsh bindings.

“Of all bad medicine, Neechee, § of all the worst luck!” he said between his clenched jaws. ‘‘Captured by Bwanoz with a child’s trick, and only two miles from the sugar camp! We certainly deserve whatever we’re going to get,” and he lay back in the snow.

“Yes, and that will not be a lump of maple sugar, either, judging from the fellow who just kicked us. Oh, why did we have the heads of fishes and not wisdom enough to heed the old women? If I ever get home again—’’ but this was too much. The sugar camp was only two miles away, but their home, by the Great Water Kitchi-Gami seemed as far away now as the moon. The two boys were silent, stabbed by fears and self-accusations. They lay still while one of the Sioux stirred up the fire.

And so they were taken captive, and the lot of the captive was theirs. The women at the sugar camp could never find them now, for their trail had been blotted out by the blizzard. With the morning they were whisked away, each made to walk ahead of a man, wrists bound with rawhide that bit into the flesh. And, though they were allowed the freedom of their hands at night around the fire, their ankles were bound to the belts of men nearby.

As far as the boys could learn they had been taken by a small scouting party out to get news of the main Chippewa settlements on the shore of the Great Water Kitchi-Gami, dangerous ground for any Sioux. The scar-nosed one had taken two scalps, for these Bopo had seen in his open parfleche, one evening. However, there was little likelihood of their having come from the sugar camp, for the scalps were weeks old, shriveled and smoked. It had turned out just as their Aunt Otter Woman had told them, time and again. The Sioux, every spring, crossed their eastern boundaries and ventured into Chippewa woodlands where they made sugar. Afterwards, they would trek back across their own woods to the great plains, hundreds of miles away. This scouting party had evidently come from just such a sugar camp, and now the boys would go back to it with them. Then what? Would they be taken along with the tents and the belongings to the place of no trees? Or would their bones be left for the coyote and the crow to show what happens when Sioux takes Chippewa?

Week after week went by. Warm winds replaced the cool ones and finally came the south wind, which sucked away the snow. The sun whittled it off the slopes in masses. Travel became easier and feet did not slip in the trail. Lake after lake, stream after stream they passed, hurrying so fast that the minds of the boys were but blurs of tree trunks passing on each side.

“Getting towards Bwanoz territory,’ said Olah, one evening, mending his moccasin with moosehide tossed them by the man with the kind face. ‘Lucky that the old man gave us this stuff, I should have been barefoot in another hour.”

“And I, too,’ replied Bopo, ruefully eyeing his own wornout gear. “But -I am harder now than when we started out. Then I was tender as a rabbit, but now I am hard as copper! I could walk all day, sleep all night walking, and still turn corners. I could sleep on ice and be warm, but I haven’t grown used to being sohungry. I hope they shoot a deer soon. This brittle buffalo meat is as tough as my leggings. If we are to die, I want to die with a full stomach!”

The next day, Bopo’s wish was gratified, though unintentionally. One man shot a deer that ran ahead of them in the trail. They had a feast after that and the boys were allowed to help themselves. Bopo stuffed, but afterwards felt as an animal fattened for the slaughter. However, the men were better natured. They even sang on the trail, so the boys knew they had no fear now of being followed. And in another day they came to a thinning in the woods along a wide river, when on the other side they saw a line of Sioux teepees, their poles pricking the blue sky like porcupine quills. Here was the sugar camp, a temporary settlement which would soon pack up and move westward to the permanent earth lodges of the Sioux.

es

The party was ferried across the river in three canoes, and such a welcome as the men received! There was a hubbub of women in brilliant buckskin garments, and a screeching of small children, and a barking of dogs. Everything was whooping that could whoop, and every foot that could make dust made it, until the air was thick with flying feathers and the whirlwind of welcome. In the midst of this the boys were led to a solitary teepee standing apart from the others. The scar-faced one shoved them inside, still wrist-bound, and closed the flap.

_ “Well, this is the end of our journey for the present,” said Olah. af

‘“‘Yes,”? agreed Bopo, gloomily, “but if I read the signs rightly, this is not the end of our troubles. This teepee must belong to our friend of the evil face. When he went out, he took a scalp pole that he found in the back. He seems to know where things are.”

“This is a snug wigwam,” said Olah, walking about and studying the details.

‘Do you remember the picture my father left on my cradle?’ said Bopo. ‘Aunt Otter Woman has it yet. Rows of these tents, all made of buffalo hide and stitched with sinew. He drew them all correctly, for he had made war on the Sioux many times.”

‘“Yes,’? continued his friend, “and my father made some similar on a birch basket. But the best was a design showing the Bwanoz breaking camp, loading the rolled hides on the poles and tying them over dogs’ backs. Aunt Otter Woman said that they can break camp completely in a few minutes. They are clever at dodging an enemy on the plains, but are no good when it comes to the woods.”

‘See, here!’ exclaimed Bopo, pointing with a foot to a length of soft doeskin hanging around the willow couch. ‘This is the owner’s life record. He is a man of honors, but not a chief. He has killed many in battle. And, yes, it is our friend of the demon face. See, here is a man’s head with a red line across the front! That’s the scar! And the rattlesnake is his totem. You might know that he’d associate with serpents!”

“He has killed many people, but here is an especially good writing. See that headgear of moosehide? That’s a Chippewa! He was scalped, and then a woman was killed—but there isn’t any scalp shown. Then there’s a baby. No scalp there, either, but a cradle with a long line to a teepee. I can’t make that out.” ;

“At any rate,’ said Bopo gloomily, growing tired of watching the painted lines, “he is a Chippewa killer. And if I guess correctly, he’d like to kill us, too. But perhaps we can use our wits—”’

Olah’s attention was riveted to a bulge at the lining bottom which appeared to move. All of a sudden the covering lifted and there was a young girl of about their own age on her hands and knees, her red-bound braids trailing. She was breathing quickly, and as she crawled inside her hands went to her mouth as a sign of silence. For a full minute she listened. The boys were too surprised to say anything.

ip ifted and there was a young g l ing

All of a sudden the cover

“My name is Wawena, and I have come to help you,”’ she whispered in good Chippewa. It was the first time for weeks that the boys had heard their own language and it made them happy.

“This is a sugar camp,” she went on hurriedly, listening every few words, ‘‘and tomorrow we move on to the great towns on the plains. You will either be taken as captives with us, and be adopted into the tribe later, or you will be killed tonight. Red Wolf, the Indian who captured you, is pleading now in the council for your adoption.”

‘Good!’ said Olah, under his breath. “I knew he was kind! He—”

“But Scar-Face,’? went on the girl interrupting, “is for burning you both at the stake! He is mad with blood. He is the man with the cut nose. He is my foster-father—”’

“Your foster-father?’’? cried Bopo in _ surprise. “That demon in human skin? Why, he ought to be tied on an ants’ nest with a fire on his back, and—” but she quieted him with a wave of her hand.

“T have only a few moments before I can get away again without being seen. I am a Chippewa. I wish to get away from my cruel father, who has done nothing but make my life miserable ever since I can remember. I know the country for two days’ travel to the east, and if possible I will have a canoe with provisions ready tonight at the river bank, just at dusk. If I find that we can escape without being seen, I will come again. If everything proves hopeless, I shall hang a red deerskin up at the right of this teepee. That will mean that I have failed in everything, and that Scar-Face has succeeded in his plot. And Scar-Face has much to say in the council.’ Here she paused, listening.