AT LAST WE HAD ALL THE HORSES IN LEAD AND WITH FAST-BEATING HEARTS ... STARTED TOWARD THE RIVER
Ha! What a long, long way those few yards were to the shelter of the stockade. At last we rounded it. Breathing freer, we passed along the north side, led the horses in through the passageway, turned them loose, and put up the bars across it. Then we pretended to go into our lodge, but crouched away from the doorway and sneaked over to the two watchers kneeling at either side of the cannon and looking out across the flat.
"You made it! My! That little song and dance of Pitamakan's, that sure fooled 'em! He is some actor, that boy," Abbott said.
"Well, what are we to do now—fire the cannon at them? Give them a big scare?" I asked.
"I don't know what to say. If only Far Thunder were here—" Abbott began.
"He is coming. Look!" said Tsistsaki.
Sure enough, he was on his way to dinner with three men, leaving three to guard the grove, as usual. The teams were almost to the site of the fort. I went out to meet them and told the men to take the horses into the barricade.
"But the horses, they should be heat ze grass. Yes?" one of them said, and all looked at me questioningly.
"Well, maybe we shall have a fight before we eat. A war party is cached out there in the sagebrush," I replied; and they shrank back as if I had struck them. At the same time I heard some slight commotion within the barricade. At Abbott's suggestion Tsistsaki was warning the women of our impending trouble and commanding them to make no outcry.
"Shut your mouth!" I hissed to one of the teamsters, who with upflung arms was beginning to make great outcry. "Not a word from any of you now. Just get those horses inside; then pretend to go to your lodges, but sneak across to the south side and remain there."
I stood by the passageway until the others arrived, and when I had told them, too, what to do, my uncle said to me as we went crouching in across the barricade, "The war party is undoubtedly the Crow outfit that you met the other day."
We joined the others, and Abbott said to him, "We've had a pretty close call, Wesley."
"Just where are the rascals? Let me see them!" my uncle demanded. He laughed grimly when we had pointed out to him the tall brush here and there concealing them. "I'll bet that they are some tired, lying there in the hot sun and straining themselves to keep the brush upright and motionless!" After a moment of thought he added, "Tsistsaki, bring me a couple of firers for this loud-mouth gun."
"I have them already," she answered and handed him a fuse. He stuck it into the touch-hole of the cannon and poured some fine powder from his horn in round it. "I will attend to this," he said to us then. "Now, you, Henri Robarre! You being about as poor a shot as ever cordelled up this river, you fire at the foot of one of those bunches of tall sage, just to start this surprise party. You others then do the best you can."
He waited until Tsistsaki had interpreted his words to Pitamakan and then told Henri to fire. Henri did so. None of us saw where the ball struck, and I doubt whether he himself knew where he aimed. The loud boom of the gun echoed across the valley and died away; the smoke from it lifted, but none of the enemy made a move; not one of their shelters even quivered.
"Just what I expected! Abbott, let us see what you can do," said my uncle.
Abbott stood up, head and shoulders above the barricade, took quick aim and fired at a bunch of the brush; down it fell as the man behind it let go his hold upon it and with loud yells of warning or command to his companions ran straight away from us. At that all the others sprang from their places of concealment like so many jumping-jacks, and those with guns fired at us before they turned to run. When we fired at them three went down at once, and two more staggered on a little way before they fell. At that our engagés took heart and yelled defiance at the enemy as they hastily began reloading their guns. I heard Abbott calling himself names for having failed to kill the man behind the brush that he had fired into.
The enemy, twenty or more of them, were drawing together as they went leaping through the sagebrush, straight up the valley; and presently they halted and faced about and with yells of hatred and defiance fired several more desultory shots at us. That was the opportunity for which my uncle was waiting. He hastily sighted the cannon at them and lighted the fuse. The old gun went off with a tremendous roar, and with wild shrieks of fear the enemy ran on faster than ever, if that were possible—all but two whom the grapeshot had struck.
"Help, here! Powder and a solid shot!" my uncle yelled.
Those, too, Tsistsaki had ready for us. Abbott and I rammed the charges in; Tsistsaki inserted a fresh fuse. We wheeled the gun round into place, and my uncle again sighted it and touched it off. We waited and waited, and at last saw a cloud of dust and bits of sagebrush puff into the air close to the left of the fleeing enemy. As one man they leaped affrightedly to the right and headed for the mouth of a coulee that entered the valley from the west. Before we could load the cannon again they had turned up into the coulee and were gone from our sight.
"Well," my uncle exclaimed, "I guess that settles our trouble with that outfit!" Almost at the same moment a heated argument arose among our engagés, every one of whom asserted that he had killed an enemy. "Here, you, the way for you all to settle your claims is to go out there and show which one of the enemy you each downed!"
Not one of them made answer to that; not one of them wanted to go out there, perhaps to face a wounded and desperate man. Pitamakan stared at them, muttered something about cowardly dog-faces, and leaped over the barricade. Abbott, my uncle, Tsistsaki, and I followed his move, but we had gone out some distance before the engagés began to follow, moving slowly well in our rear.
We, of course, did not proceed without due caution. The very first one of the dead that we approached was one of the two Crows who had tried to entice Pitamakan and me into a peace smoke with them, which would have been our last. We were glad enough that he was one of the dead.
"I killed him," said Pitamakan as we passed on. "I killed him; he dropped when I fired, but I cannot count coup upon him."
"Why not?" Tsistsaki asked.
"Because of that!" he replied, turning and pointing to the engagés. They had come to the body of the Crow and three were pretending to have fired the bullet that laid the enemy low. "I cannot prove that I killed him," he added sorrowfully.
Now the three engagés who had been left on guard in the grove came to us, out of breath and excited, and my uncle promptly ordered them back to their places. We made the round of the dead, the engagés taking their weapons and various belongings; then we went back to the barricade for dinner, first, however, watering and picketing the hungry horses. Later on, when the teams were again hitched, the engagés drove about and gathered up the dead and consigned them to the depths of the big river.
That evening as Pitamakan, Abbott, and I were preparing to go down into the grove for our nightly watch the engagés were celebrating our victory of the day. They had all assembled in Henri Robarre's lodge, singing quaint songs, boasting of their bravery and accurate shooting, and calling loudly for the women to prepare a little feast, for they were going to dance. The women! They were gathered in another lodge, laughing at their men. Otter Woman, Henri Robarre's wife, who was a wonderful mimic, was making the others ache from laughing as she repeated her man's futile protests and his gait when she had driven him home from the gathering of the men who requested their discharge.
"Those women have a whole lot more sense than their men," Abbott remarked.
The night passed quietly. Late in the following afternoon, just after we three had ended our daily sleep, the women cried out that they could see the smoke from a down-river steamboat, and Tsistsaki ran to the grove to let my uncle know of its coming.
He hurried up to the barricade and eagerly watched the approaching smoke. "We shall have help now; you boys will not have to stand night watch much longer. That old tub is bringing plenty of men!"
The boat soon rounded the bend above and drew in to our landing. Two men leaped ashore, and the roustabouts threw their rolls of bedding after them. From the pilot-house Henry Page tossed out to us a weighted sack. "I'm sorry, Wesley, that we couldn't get more men for you. There's a letter that explains it all!" he called. "Well, keep up a good heart; your Blackfeet will soon be with you. So long!" Then the surly captain, standing beside him, rang some bells, Page whirled his big wheel, and the boat went on. The two men came up the bank and greeted us. I had been so intent upon our few words with the pilot that I had not noticed who they were.
Now I was glad when I saw the rugged, smooth-shaven faces of the Tennessee Twins, as they were called all up and down the river. The Baxters, Lem and Josh, were independent bachelor trappers who roamed where they willed, despite the hostile war parties of various tribes that were ever trying to get their scalps. They seemed to bear charmed lives. As a rule the American Fur Company had not been friendly toward independent trappers, but those two men were so big-hearted and had done us so many favors that we all thought highly of them; and Pierre Chouteau himself had given orders to all the factors up and down the river that they were to be treated with every consideration.
"Well, Wesley, here we are," said Lem Baxter after we had shaken hands all round.
"You don't mean that you have come to work for me?" my uncle exclaimed.
"That's about the size of it," Josh put in.
"You see, 't was this way," Lem went on. "When we heard of the trouble you were in, and Carroll and Steell couldn't engage any men for you, we saw it were our plain duty to come down and lend you a hand."
"Who said that we were in trouble?"
"Why, that there steamboat captain, Wiggins," Lem answered. "You see, 't was this way: Henry Page bawled the captain out fer not allowin' him to put in here in answer to your hail. So to kind of play even the low-down sneak begins to blow about the battle you are expectin' to have with the Assiniboins. Yes, sir, makes a regular holler about it as soon as his boat ties up in front of the fort. Well, I guess you know them French engagés. The minute they hear about the Assiniboins Carroll and Steell can't hire nary a one of 'em for you."
"Well, now, that Wiggins man is a real friendly kind of chap, isn't he?" my uncle exclaimed. By the tone of his voice I knew that that captain was in for trouble when the two should meet.
"Still, Wesley, you're in luck," Lem went on. "Who but your own brother-in-law, White Wolf, should happen to be in the fort when Page delivered your letter to Steell. As soon as he was told what was up he said to us, 'You tell Far Thunder that we shall all be with him for that battle with the cut-throats! Tell him to look for us to come chargin' down by the Crooked Creek Trail!' Then he lit out for his camp as fast as he could go."
"Ha! Down Sacajawea Creek. They will cross the river at Fort Benton. Down the north side would have been the shorter way," said my uncle.
"We mentioned that to him, and he answered that better time could be made on the south-side trail," said Josh.
"And there you be! Don't worry!" cried Lem. "Now, Wesley, is it sartin sure that you plunked that there Slidin' Beaver?"
"His body is somewhere down there in the river!" I replied.
"You bet! Wesley finished him!" Abbott exclaimed.
"Glory be! Look how near that there cut-throat got me!" cried Lem, and pointed to a bullet crease in the side of his neck.
"Hurry! Tell me the news they brought!" Pitamakan demanded of me as we all turned toward the barricade. He fairly danced round me when he learned that his own father had taken word of our need to the Pikuni and that the warriors would come to us as soon as possible by the south-side trail.
Presently Tsistsaki called us to supper. During the meal we told the Twins all that had happened to us since we landed there at the mouth of the Musselshell. Then, having learned the details of our day-and-night watch, they declared that they wanted to stand watch in the grove that night and laughed when we said that we thought three men were needed to guard it.
We three were only too glad to let them have their way. However, we relieved the engagés from watch duty in the barricade, dividing the night between us, and they were therefore in good shape the next morning for a day of real work. Beginning that day, they were all ordered to cut and haul logs while the rest of us performed what guard duty had been their share. In consequence the heaps of logs round the site of the fort grew rapidly, and we began to look forward to the day when we should begin work upon the walls. My uncle said that at least one side of the fort must soon be put up, in which to store the trade goods that would surely be landed for us within six weeks.
A day came soon, but not too soon for Pitamakan and me, when the camp required more meat. I asked to be allowed to ride Is-spai-u, but my uncle shook his head.
As we were saddling our horses, the men started for the grove and Henri Robarre called out to us: "Eet is halways ze buf' dat you keel! Why not sometames ze helk, ze deer, ze hantelopes?"
"Kyai-yo!" Tsistsaki exclaimed. "He knows that real meat is the best; it is only that he must be continually making objections that he talks that way. Pay no attention to him; kill real meat for us as usual."
"Oh, kill elk or deer along with the buffalo! Kill some badgers if they want them! Anything for peace in camp!" my uncle exclaimed.
It was easy enough to get the buffalo; they were always in the valley within sight of camp. That morning we found a herd within a mile of it, killed five fat animals and had the meat all loaded upon the following wagon by nine o'clock. The teamster then headed for camp, and we went on to kill what our horses could pack of some other kind of meat.
Now, we did not want to ride into the brush-filled groves along the river in quest of elk and deer, for as likely as not we should be ambushed by some wandering war party. We therefore turned back through the grove in which the men were at work and thence went on down the big game trail running from the mouth of the Musselshell down the Missouri Valley. Where it entered the first of the narrow bottoms we turned off. We had gone no more than a couple of hundred yards when four bull elk rose out of a patch of junipers on the hill to our right and inquisitively stared at us. I slipped from my horse, took careful aim, and shot one of them.
We tethered our horses close to my kill and were butchering it when we were startled by a loud but distant hail and sprang for our rifles, which were leaning against some brush several steps away. We looked down into the bottom under us and there, just outside the narrow grove that fringed the river, we saw five Indians standing all in a row.
"Ha! Another war party, and no doubt another invitation to a smoke that would be the end of us!" Pitamakan exclaimed indignantly.