DRAWING TO A HEAD.
Red Knife blew his war whistle loudly. This was the cue for forty men to spring on their ponies. The chief took the lead and all tore away like fiends over the level ground. They soon "fanned out" there, banishing their guns over their heads, tossing up war clubs and catching them when all but touching the ground, juggling with their knives and pistols, all without drawing rein; executing, in fact, circus feats, after the manner of the Arabs, who employ this same method, or fantasia, to greet a celebrity. On his part, the trapper was riding a steed without any harness whatever—one that he had caught astray from the unfortunate Half-breed detachment that "bunked up" against the Cherokee. Except for the lasso which had ensnared it, and which served as a halter, it obeyed the rider by his voice and slap of the hand, and was restrained from rebellion by the threatening pressure of his knees, with which he would have crushed in the ribs.
This simple show of arrogant horsemanship delighted the Piegans, who journey oftenest on foot, and they all fired off their guns. Then, forming a line abreast under cover of the smoke, they charged with a prodigious howling, but when almost overwhelming the solitary rider, they reined up by a miracle of skill, as if their poor broken-jawed horses had suddenly taken root in the ground.
Jim had come on at the same round pace, as if the yelling cavalcade were miles remote. He had been too long identified with Indian customs not to see in this demonstration what it really was—a strong manifestation of the regard he was held in, and their joy at his venturing by himself in their midst.
Red Knife and the others now fell in as an escort, and so accompanied him to the encampment, where the tedious ceremony of reception had to be gone through. The Grand Monarch, in all his glories, was not more punctilious than the Indians in their refined etiquette. The whole performances, as Bill termed them to Doña Rosario, were bound to last an hour, and they protracted them to half as much again.
Old Ridge supported them like a king to the manner born. No such trifle was going to hinder him from his purpose.
Whilst the warriors continued their rejoicings, the chiefs went into the medicine lodge, and more solemnly received Ridge there, the Cherokee being his sponsor.
The Old Yager was in a predicament. The red men wanted him to co-operate with them in a league of the Indians against the whites east, south, and north; but as this would have been treachery, or at least apostasy, they had to lessen their desires gradually during a long discussion. As Jim said, he pared the proposition down till it came to a smaller head! The Yellowstone Basin was to be defended from all comers. On his side, Jim promised that none of the trappers, hunters, Scotch Canadians, and whoever might rally to him should enter the Firehole Region. Kidd, the Half-breeds of Red River, and any scoundrels who flocked to them as the redskins advanced and swept the country, were to be destroyed.
"You will have all the fighting you hunger for," remarked Jim drily, "with these rascals, without wanting to go on and injure the Bostons, or King George's men."
As the pact was clear for the morrow, and the savages do not look forward beyond a day, the utmost good feeling remained.
Runners were sent out, and during the evening representatives came in from the hunting parties allied to the Piegans. There were chiefs of the Small Robes, Blackfeet proper, Blackfeet Sioux, which linked the league with the Dacotahs and counterbalanced the Crows, in case Ahnemekee objected to the new and narrow arrangement, and some Rovers. These summed up as one hundred and fifty war men. The Yager counted them and recognised the elders among them with relief and gladness. He had resolved to crush out Kidd and his crew to the last man. He had contemplated the march of events with secret satisfaction, having prepared many of them; and the great progress made in a few days was enormously gratifying.
A little while before he and his nephew and Cherokee Bill stood against huge odds. Now they were commanding an army. If the reds were not perfect matches to the gold grabbers, they were quite so to the Manitobans, and the Scotch Canadians and Americans formed a reserve, or backbone, which ensured success.
Now the intruders were being enveloped in a net of which the meshes were self-plaiting themselves all around them. When the fowler pulled the string, the game would be inextricably caught.
At a final council held at night the concord was perfected. Saying nothing of hostilities against the border settlers, Montana miners, railroad surveyors, and pioneers north, the objective point of the allied reds, with Jim Ridge as mere counsellor and volunteer private, was to be Elk's Leap, where Captain Kidd, reinforced by the French Canadians, was tending to enter the Yellowstone Park.
Runners and riders went out to collect scouts and strayers. Messengers were selected to throw a sheaf of arrows, a knife, and a bag of powder and balls into the camp of Captain Kidd and that of the Red River Rovers if separate. The war pole, forty feet high, was set up at the Piegan camp, for the war dance to be performed round it. Jim Ridge did not join in the capering, but the Cherokee, curtly remarking that "it would do him good," stripped, and paraded, and leaped among the dancers. The cut of his hatchet on the pole was a tie with Red Knife's for height of the bound and cleanness of the chop. At the dawn, the deputies hurried to their camps to marshal their braves and conduct them to the rendezvous.
It is to be noted that the Red Indians spring sharply from their laziness of peacetimes into the strain of warfare. They become other men. Metamorphosed entirely, they endure with unflinching stoicism the greatest fatigue and longest privations. The very men who were ridiculous sloths and gluttons will never groan at having no sight of food for two, three, or even four days, or even at having no water.
Then they are granite and stop for nothing, and are not surprised at any disaster. Cold, heat, sun or rain, snow or hail, these are silently mocked at. Hence the secret foundation of their rapid movements, the fury of their attack, and their unconquerable energy in battle.
After the final talk, Ridge had a short conversation with Williams, immediately after which the latter left the camp. The white trapper had, we have remarked, kept himself out of the savage demonstration, sitting at a watch fire without even dozing off. A white man with an army of reds is like a chemist experimenting with an explosive of which all the qualities have yet to be tested. In some unexpected manner the whole may hoist the engineer himself.
About an hour after sunrise the Cherokee returned. He was accompanied by two white hunters. They were to be the guards of Doña Rosario, who, though she made a wry face about it, as if she personally wished to assist in the deliverance of Miss Maclan, consented reluctantly to being lodged in one of Jim Ridge's mountain refuges.
"Poor girl," murmured he, as she departed, "what a blessing that she has no idea that I am her kinsman, and that her father has perhaps lost his life in helping Bill to wrest her from that villain."
He was very thoughtful, and his chat with his comrades was more brief and in shorter phrases than ever. If he was idle in his moodiness, however, the Cherokee redoubled his activity in scouting.
There was already one screw loose in the machinery: the Crows had lost connection with the Piegans. Their disappearance was perplexing, ominous even. The Piegans were completely puzzled. And all Ridge surmised was that somehow Ahnemekee had learnt, or strongly supposed, that not Kidd, but the Mountain Men had interfered with his descent on the Red River Half-breeds.
Red Knife, though, soon offered his opinion that the Crows were cowards, and had skulked away from the prospective battlefield.
Apart from this defection, all went on merrily enough for six days, when the concentration was perfected. Each day the border ruffians and Canadians were kept under view, and camp for camp invisibly opposed each other. It is true the mixed bloods and the whites had their scouts and outliers busy, but they found nothing to alarm. The trappers and Blackfeet seemed to be swallowed up in the mountain gorges.
The temperature became milder. The influence of the hot water springs of the Yellowstone certainly affected the air. In four days or so, toilsomely as the adventurers broke their way through the pathless wilds, they would hail the promised golden land.
But one evening Cherokee Bill, as director of all the scouts, reported that there were more ingredients for the stew. Instead of finding Ahnemekee's band in the eastward, his spies had descried evidences of a strong force of whites. And in the Northwest also another body of whites were perceived.
This news very much disquieted Jim Ridge, and deepened his thoughtfulness. According to the flag to which they held allegiance, the newcomers might exert a preponderating influence on what was to become a veritable war. Hesitation would be fatal. It was imperative to have done with present opposing elements as quickly as possible, or have a double force to contest. It is soundest reason in the wilderness to believe enemies approach, and, anyway, white men would rather combine with those of their complexion than the redskins.
This was strictly logical, but, as often happens in practical life, that itself made it wrong; but the Yager could not suspect this. Always in his fears was that of the lovely enclosed country of the Yellowstone becoming the prey to land raiders and freebooters. He warded off intruders from that garden like the dragon of antique fable.