CHAPTER XXVII. BAPTISTE LAJEUNESSE.
The slow return of the village to the Marias River, and their journey along it to the camp, was uneventful. Hugh had let it be known among his friends, that on reaching this camp he and Jack would leave them, and the evening before this took place, a great feast was given by the head chief, Iron Shirt, to which a considerable number of the principal men of the village were asked. Out of compliment to Jack, Joe and Handsome Face were invited, and it was between them that he sat on the right of the chief on this great occasion. The speeches made were many, and in each one of them were friendly allusions to the two white men, who for some months past had dwelt in the camp. During the smoking of the last pipe, Hugh stood on his feet and made a speech in Piegan, in which he acknowledged all the kindness that they had received. Then, as they had previously arranged, the three boys got up and went about the circle, putting down before each one of the guests a package containing some present, which should be a slight memorial of their visit.
The making up of these bundles had occupied Joe and Jack for two evenings, and they contained about all the trade goods that they had brought from the South, so that when the bundles had been prepared, all the red cloth, the beads, the tobacco and the handkerchiefs were gone, and of all the property that they had brought into the camp, there remained only a little food.
The next morning, long before they were up, presents from different people in the camp began to arrive at the lodge. There were great piles of buffalo robes, beautiful moccasins, shirts ornamented with beads or porcupine quills; skins and furs of one sort and another. More, as Hugh said, than they could pack on their horses. However, they made up their bundles and by borrowing a couple of pack horses from John Monroe, managed to load all their possessions, and set out for Benton. The flour sack, which contained the gold, was wrapped in a bear skin and placed on the bucking dun, under a great pile of robes.
Jack had arrayed himself in a suit of new clothing throughout. A beautiful shirt of antelope skin, heavily fringed and ornamented with quills, buckskin trousers, bead worked, and a pair of handsomely ornamented buckskin moccasins, with parfleche soles. About his hat was a strip of otter fur. His knife sheath was a large one of Indian make, studded with bright brass headed nails, and from a buttonhole of his shirt hung the gold powder charger by a buckskin string.
They started late, and it was night when they reached Fort Benton. However, Hugh managed to find his friend who owned the stable, and they put their possessions in it, their horses into the corral, and slept on the fragrant hay. At daylight next morning they were up, and after a time had breakfast. Hugh inquired when the bank would be open, and learned that this would not be for three or four hours yet. He told the boys, therefore, to go out and wander about the town if they wanted to, and said that he would stay with their property in the stable, until the time came to go to the bank with the gold.
Joe's childhood having been spent in Benton, he was a good guide for the town; yet concerning the old fort and the interior of the trading posts, he knew little or nothing. For some time they wandered through the streets and down along the river bank, and at length turned about to return to the stable. As they were passing along the street, Jack stopped before the window of a saloon to look at a mountain sheep's head with immense horns, and after he had looked at it for a while, and spoken with Joe of its great size, he turned to walk away, and as he did so, found himself standing face to face with a very tall man, whose long white beard reached nearly to his waist. The stranger was not only very tall, but very broad as well; but seemed thin, almost to emaciation, yet gave one the idea of a person possessing great strength. He was neatly dressed in buckskin, which, though not new, was clean and in good condition, and was without any ornament of beads or quill work. As Jack stepped aside to avoid the old man, he spoke to him in a low, pleasant voice, and said: "The head is large, my friend, is it not?"
"Yes, sir," said Jack, "it's immense. I never saw anything so big, but then I haven't killed many sheep, in fact, I have only seen a very few."
"You are young," said the stranger. "You have not lived long enough to see many things. Do you belong in this country?"
"No," said Jack, "I come from back in the States. I am just out here for a little while, and have been living this summer with the Indians up north."
"You are along way from home. How do you come to be here?" said the man. "Young boys do not usually travel that great distance alone."
"Oh," said Jack, "I came with a friend, Mr. Hugh Johnson, maybe you've heard of him. He's been a long time in the country, more than forty years." The man seemed to ponder.
"Many years ago I knew a man so called; those were in the trapping days. We used to call him then, Casse-tête, because, once with a stone, he smashed the head of a wounded cow that was charging him. He had a strong arm and good luck." Jack was interested, and wondered if it were Hugh who had done this. He would have liked to ask more questions, but by the clock in the saloon, he saw that it was time to meet Hugh, and he thought, perhaps, that he could find this old man again, later, and talk to him, so he took off his hat politely and said good morning, and started to go on. But as he moved, the old man touched him on the shoulder and said: "Wait, friend; you have there," pointing to Jack's breast, "property that I lost long ago. Where did you get it? If you look at it, you will find scratched in the metal, my initials, 'B. L.'"
For a moment, Jack was almost dumb with astonishment, and then he said: "Are you Baptiste Lajeunesse?"
"That is my name," said the old man, "where have you heard it?"
"Oh, Mr. Lajeunesse, wait until we find Hugh, then we must have a long talk with you. Were you chased by Indians once, long ago south of the Bear Paw Mountains? And did you lose a mule there?"
The old man smiled rather sadly, and said: "Truly, my son, I was chased there, and I did lose a mule and many other valuable things which I have never been able to find. But one of them I see now on your breast."
Jack quickly untied the powder charger and offered it to Baptiste who waved it away. Then Jack asked him: "Where can we find you in an hour or two? We will come back here with Hugh, I'm almost sure that he is the man that you call Casse-tête."
"I'll be near here all the day," said Baptiste, "and if I'm not in sight, the man in the saloon can tell you where I have gone." Without a word more, Jack and Joe started on a run toward the stable.
When they reached the stable, there was no one there, but a man loitering in the street near by, told them that he had seen "their partner" going up the street a little while before, with a sack of flour on his shoulder. At once, Joe led the way to the bank nearby, and entering it, they could see, behind the counter, Hugh and another man, in earnest conversation. As soon as Hugh saw them he introduced them to Mr. Finley, the manager of the bank, as his two partners. Hugh had already taken out the gold. It had been examined and weighed, and three drafts, each for $2,520.00 were now being made out, one to the order of each of the three.
Hugh told Jack that a few miles below the town, there was a steam-boat loading, on which they could get passage for Bismarck, and that he had made arrangements to have all their baggage hauled down to it.
"I reckon, we'll leave all the horses, except maybe Pawnee and your new horse, up here in charge of Joe. We can trust him to look after them carefully, and I reckon it's more than likely, that you may come back here again next season; and if you do, it will be a lot shorter for you to come direct and find your horses here, rather than to go to the ranch and have to ride up across country. That takes a lot of time.
"Of course, if you want to, you can leave all the horses here, we won't need them going down. And now, I reckon," he added, "we'll go out and buy some things. We'll stop in again to shake hands with you, Mr. Finley, before we quit the town."
They were scarcely outside the door, when Jack, who in his excitement, had hardly been able to keep quiet, exclaimed, "Oh! Hugh, we've found Baptiste Lajeunesse."
"Sho," said Hugh, "you don't mean it."
"Yes we have. He saw the powder charger and before looking at it, said it was his and that he had lost it a long time, and that it had his initials on it. He had not told us what his name was, and I asked if he was Baptiste Lajeunesse, and he said yes. Let's go and see him and find out all about what happened when he lost the powder charger; and oh! Hugh," he said, his face falling, "suppose that gold belongs to him."
"Well, son," said Hugh, "if it's Bat, and he lost the powder charger and he lost the gold too, we are all just as poor as we were before you found it."
"Oh!" said Jack, "won't that be a shame, when we have been thinking that we were all so rich, and when Joe needs so many things, and you and me too, Hugh."
"Well," said Hugh, with a comical look of disappointment on his face, "I guess we all think we need lots of things that we haven't got, but somehow or other, if we can't have 'em, we manage to just live along in about the same way, and I don't know as it makes much difference, but I would like to see Joe with a good gun and I reckon we'll have to try to get him one somehow, whether we have the gold or not."