Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/199

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less ; but when they grow strong and swift the beasts of the field will run away and leave them to their fate, or even fight against them when they are strong, as bravely as they did for them when they were weak.

At the bottom of all other reasons for taking care of this man, who seemed to become every day less capable of taking care of himself, was a little poetical fact not forgotten. This man furnished bread when we were hungry when the snow was deep, when the earth lay in a lock-jaw, as it were, and could not open her mouth to us.

Now and then Klamat would turn his eyes over his shoulder, toss his head, and urge on. The eagle-feathers in his black hair, as if glad to get back again in the winds of Shasta, floated and flew back at us, and we followed as if we followed a banner. A black banner, this we followed, made of the feathers of a fierce and bloody bird. Where would it lead us? No buccaneers of the sea were freer, wilder, braver at heart than we. Where would it lead us ?

One thing was fearfully against us. The recent rains had made the ground soft and spongy. The four horses made a trail that could be followed on the run. Even where the pine-quills lay thickest, the ground would be broken here and there so as to leave little doubt or difficulty to our pursuers.

Had it been a dry autumn the ground would have been hard as an adobe, and we might have dodged to one side almost anywhere, and, providing our mules