FAR THUNDER RIDS THE PLAINS OF A RASCAL
We crossed the river and rode up Sacajawea Creek to the valley. Then we climbed to the rim of the plain and rode along it to camp. I had constantly to hold in Is-spai-u so that Pitamakan, riding my fast buffalo-runner, could keep up with me. It was dusk when we arrived in camp. The women—some of them, not Tsistsaki, you may be sure—cried out in alarm at the news that we had found the fresh trail of a war party traveling down the valley, and Louis wailed, "Pauvre me! Pauvre me! I am lose my pension; and now I shall be keeled by zese war parties! Oh, wat a countree terrible ees zis!"
"Oh, be still, Windy!" Sol Abbott growled at him. "You make us all tired! Be a man!"
Solomon Abbott, a lank, red-haired Missourian six feet two inches in height, a famous plainsman and trapper and a brave and kindly fellow, was our best man. He was helping in our work only because of his great liking for my uncle. As soon as our post was built, he would again go out with his woman upon his lone pursuit of the beaver. The Blackfeet had affectionately named him Great Hider, because he was so crafty in escaping from the enemy. He had had many thrilling escapes from the Assiniboins, the Sioux, and the Crows, and had killed so many of them that they had come to believe that he was proof against their arrows and bullets.
"Well, Sol," said my uncle to him now, "it is best to have the horses right here in the barricade with us this night, don't you think?"
"Sure thing! Right in here, and some of us on guard all night!" he answered.
Some of the men were sent to bring in the animals that were picketed near by, and Tsistsaki called Pitamakan and me to eat. Abbott presently came into our lodge, and my uncle and he decided upon the different watches for the night. Pitamakan, my uncle, and I were to take our turn at two o'clock and watch until daylight, about four o'clock, when the horses were to be taken out to graze. A night in the stockade would be no hardship to them, for the new grass was so luxuriant that they would eat all that they could hold.
Another point of discussion was whether the cannon should be loaded and made ready for the expected attack. Pitamakan and I were asked how many we thought there might be in the war party and replied that there were between fifteen and twenty men, certainly not more than twenty-five.
"Well, we'll load the cannon, because it should be loaded and kept loaded and the touch-hole well protected from dampness," said my uncle, "but we will not fire it at any small war party; our rifles can take care of them. We will just keep the cannon cached, as a surprise when a big war party comes."
The lodge fires did not burn long that night. Pitamakan and I went to sleep while our elders were still smoking and talking.
Promptly on time Abbott came into our lodge and awakened us, and my uncle, Pitamakan, and I were soon in our places at the edge of the barricade. There was a piece of a moon, the stars were very bright, and in the north there was a perceptible whitish glow in the sky, as if from some far distant aurora playing upon the snow and ice of the always-winter land. Pitamakan, coming and standing at my side, said that Cold-Maker was dancing up there and making medicine for the attack upon the sun that he would begin a few moons hence.
"The old men, our wise ones, say," he went on, "that Cold-Maker may sometime obtain what he is ever seeking, a medicine so powerful that it will enable him to drive the sun far, far into the south and keep him there. Think how terrible it would be! Our beautiful prairies and mountains would become an always-winter land! The game, the trees and brush and grasses, would all die off, and we, of course, should perish with them!"
"Don't you worry about that!" I told him. "Sun has a certain trail to follow, and he is all-powerful. Let him make what medicine he may, old Cold-Maker cannot halt his course!"
"Ha! That is my thought, too. Wise though our old men are, they certainly don't know all about what is going on up there in the sky!"
Off to the south of us I heard my uncle mutter something about youthful philosophers and then laugh quietly.
From where we stood, with our shoulders and heads concealed by some brush stuck into the barricade, we could see the black mass of the grove and the silvery gleam of the river sweeping by it. The hush and quiet of the night were almost unbroken; not even an owl was hooting. The only sound that we could hear at all was the murmur of the river close under the cutbank on our left. The Missouri is a deceptive river. Though its heaving, eddying, swift flow is apparently without obstructions, yet it has a voice—an insistent, deep, plaintive voice that rises and falls and makes the listener imagine things; that seems to be trying to tell all the strange scenes and changes it has witnessed down through the countless ages of its being.
"Do you hear it, the voice, the singing of the river? Isn't it beautiful?" I said.
"It is terrible, heart-chilling. What you hear is not the voice of the river; it is the singing of the dread Under-Water People who live down there in its depths and ever watch for a chance to drag us down to our death!"
My uncle slipped up behind us so quietly that we were startled. "You youngsters quit talking; use your eyes instead of your mouths!" he whispered, and stole back to his stand on the south side of the enclosure.
"We were and we are using our eyes, but maybe we were talking too loud; we will whisper from now on," said Pitamakan.
"Do you think that the war party discovered our camp last evening?" I asked.
"They were coming this way and had plenty of time before dark to arrive in the grove down there where is all the chopping. No doubt they saw us ride out of the valley and along its rim. Yes, almost-brother, you may be sure that they have seen our camp. Will they try to break in here and take our horses? Hide in the grove and attack the men when they go to work? Go their way without attempting to trouble us? Ha! I wonder!"
An hour passed, perhaps more; and then from the direction of the grove we saw a dark form slowly approaching us; then came more forms, all upon hands and knees, sneaking through the grass like so many wolves.
Pitamakan nudged me with his elbow. "Don't shoot until they come quite close," he whispered. I answered him by pressing his arm.
Meantime my uncle had also discovered the enemy and now came to us, crouching low and stepping noiselessly; he got between us and whispered: "Aim at men at right and at left. I will shoot at a center man. Pull trigger when I say now!"
I selected my mark, the man at the extreme end of the line nearest the river, and anxiously awaited the word to fire. I thought that my uncle would never give it; the longer I aimed at my mark the worse my rifle seemed to wabble; the bead sight made circles all round the outline of the creeping man. At last, "Now!" or rather, "Kyi!" my uncle said and pulled the trigger as he said it. The flash from his gun blinded me for a moment, and I did not fire. But Pitamakan's rifle cracked, even a little before my uncle fired, and we heard a groan and a sharp cry of pain. My vision came back to me. I saw fifteen or twenty men running from us, making for the grove. I fired at one of them, and missed. After all my experience in shooting at night at the word of command, I had been too slow!
Right after I fired, the aroused men came running with weapons in hand, and the women, crouching low within the lodges, hushed the children as best they could.
"What is up? What did you fire at? Where is the enemy?" the men cried, crowding close to us. My uncle was hurriedly answering them when, from down near the grove, ten or twelve guns spit fire at us, and we heard several balls thud into the logs in front of us, and one ripped through the leather skin of a lodge. We ducked, and the men returned the enemy fire.
"Well, Wesley, I call this downright mean of you!" Sol Abbott said to my uncle reproachfully. "Why on earth didn't you let us in on this? Why didn't you call me, anyhow? Pluggin' these here cut-throat night raiders is my long suit, and you know it! Here you've had all the sport yourself! 'Twasn't fair, by gum!"
"Oh, well, they were but few. I knew that they would run as soon as we fired. I didn't think it worth while to awaken you. I really believe that I never gave you a thought."
"You got one of them!" some one exclaimed.
"Two! Two of them are lying out there in the grass," I said. I had had my eyes upon them all the time I was reloading my rifle.
"Perhaps they are not dead; we'll go out and soon finish them off," Abbott proposed.
"You shall not!" my uncle exclaimed. But he was too late; Pitamakan was already over the barricade and running to the enemy that he had shot. We saw him stoop over the fallen man, then rise with a bow and a shield that he waved aloft with his free hand.
"I count coup upon this enemy. I call upon you, Far Thunder, and you, almost-brother, to witness that I take these weapons from this enemy that I have killed!"
"We hear you!" I answered.
"Far Thunder," he called to my uncle, "come and take the weapons of your kill!"
My uncle laughed. "I am past all that," he began, but never finished what he intended to say.
"Far Thunder, my man," Tsistsaki interrupted, "think how proud of you I shall be when those weapons out there are hung with the others that you have taken upon the walls of the home that we are building here! As you love me, go out and count your coup!"
So, to please her, and, I doubt not, with no little pride in what he had accomplished, my uncle went out to his fallen enemy and leaned over him; then, with a flintlock gun in his hand, he suddenly straightened up and cried, in the Blackfoot tongue, of course:
"I call upon you all to witness that I killed this man! I count coup upon one of our greatest enemies, a chief of the Assiniboins, Sliding Beaver!"
Oh, how we shouted when we heard that name! We could hardly believe our ears. And Tsistsaki sprang over the barricade and ran toward my uncle, crying, "Are you sure?" We all followed her and gathered round the fallen man, forgetting in the excitement of the moment that we were offering a large and compact mark to the guns of his followers. Day was beginning to break, and we could see the man's features fairly well—the massive, big-nosed, cruel-mouthed face, with the broad scar across the forehead, mark of the lance of our chief, Big Lake.
"He is Sliding Beaver and no other!" Sol Abbott cried. "Wesley, my old friend, here's to you! You sure have rid these plains of the most blood-thirsty rascal, the meanest, low-down murderer, that ever traipsed across them."
No fear of the enemy could now hold back the other women of our camp. They came running to us with their children squawling after them, for the moment forgotten. Crowding round my uncle, they chanted over and over:
"A great chief is Far Thunder! Oho! Aha! Our enemy he has killed! He has killed Sliding Beaver, the cut-throat chief!"
"Well, what shall we do with him—and the other one?" I asked.
"Into the river they go!" Abbott answered. And in they went with big splashes. As they sank, Pitamakan cried out, "Under-Water People! We give to you these bodies! If you can injure them still more than we have done, we pray you to do so!"
It was now broad daylight. After the enemy had fired their lone, long-range volley at us we heard no more from them, nor could we see them; they were doubtless down in the grove. We returned to the stockade, and my uncle told a couple of the men to take the horses out to graze; but they did not go far out with them. The women hurried into the lodges and began preparing breakfast, singing, many of them, the song of victory. They were happy over the death of the dread Assiniboin chief. We remained outside, watching the valley and counting up the record of his terrible deeds, so far as we knew them. Trading entirely with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, he had always been an enemy of the American Fur Company and at various times had waylaid and killed eight of its trappers. Pitamakan said that he had killed four men and seven women of his tribe, and then recounted the well-known tale of his fight with Big Lake.
Leading about a hundred mounted warriors, Sliding Beaver had approached a camp of the Pikuni and signaled that he had come to fight its chief. The challenge was accepted, and presently Big Lake, armed with only a lance, rode out to meet him. The Assiniboin was carrying a gun and a bow and had no lance.
"You proposed this fight, so you must use the weapons of my choice; go get a lance from your warriors."
Sliding Beaver rode back to them, left his gun and bow, borrowed a lance, and, raising the Assiniboin war song in his terrible voice,—a thunderous voice it was,—wheeled his horse about and rode straight at Big Lake, who likewise charged at him. They neared each other at tremendous speed, and Big Lake tried to force his horse right against the other animal; but at the last Sliding Beaver turned the animal aside and they swept past. They lunged out with their lances, and Big Lake slightly wounded the Assiniboin in his shoulder, getting not even a scratch in return. Then again they charged, and Big Lake, sure that his enemy would not meet him fairly, swerved his horse to the right just as the other was doing likewise, dodged Sliding Beaver's thrust, and with his spear gave him a glancing blow on the forehead that laid open the skin, but failed to pierce the bone. But Sliding Beaver reeled in his saddle from the force of it, and a mighty shout went up from the Pikuni, for they thought he would fall from his horse.
He recovered his seat, however, and fled far, far out across the plain. Big Lake, try as he would, could not overtake him. His followers fled as soon as they saw that he was running away, and the Pikuni killed a number of them. The victory was without question with Big Lake; he had not only wounded Sliding Beaver in fair combat, but in the presence of a hundred of his warriors had proved him to be a coward.
"I'll bet he told his warriors he had broken his lance and had to flee, and that he did break it against a rock before his men overtook him!" my uncle exclaimed.
Long afterwards we learned he had done that very thing.
The women presently called us all to eat. We washed and went inside, and Tsistsaki said to my uncle, "Chief, and chief-killer, be seated. Eat the food of chiefs!" Setting before him a huge dish of boiled boss ribs and a piece of berry pemmican as large as my two fists, she served Pitamakan and me equally large portions of the rich food, and gave us cups of strong coffee and slices of sour-dough bread. We ate with tremendous appetite, having been up so long, but I could see that my uncle was worried about something; I surmised what it was before he said: "Well, Thomas, our troubles begin. Without doubt Sliding Beaver's followers are cached down there in the grove. I dare not take the men to work this morning."
"What did he say?" Pitamakan asked Tsistsaki. She told him.
"I can see no help for it," said my uncle; "the men must remain in camp to-day, for those cut-throats are doubtless in the grove lying in wait."
"Yes, and they may remain there more than one day; they may hold up our work many days," Tsistsaki put in.
Just then we heard a woman cry, "Oh, look! Look! The cut-throats are going!"
We all ran outside and looked where she was pointing. Below the mouth of the Musselshell, the Missouri bent toward the south and swept the base of a high, cut bluff. The enemy were ascending it, heading, apparently, for the next bottom below. We counted seventeen men, about the number that we thought there should be.
"Ha! All is well!" my uncle cried. "Men, finish your breakfast and let us get to work!"
We went back to our lodge, and when Tsistsaki had poured us fresh coffee Pitamakan said to my uncle: "Far Thunder, those cut-throats could have sneaked away without our knowing it. I believe that they wanted us to see them going. Why? Because they intend to sneak back, perhaps to-day, maybe to-morrow, and surprise the men when they are working down there in the timber."
Abbott had come in. My uncle turned to him and said: "You heard what he said. What do you think about it? What do you advise?"
"Well, how would it do for Thomas and Pitamakan to go down and watch that trail running over the bluff and on down the river, and for me to watch the breaks of the Musselshell and its valley above the grove? Then, if the cut-throats should come sneaking back, either the boys or I would discover them in time to warn you and the men."
"You have said it!" my uncle exclaimed. "You boys, take some middle-of-the-day food, saddle your horses, and go watch that trail!"
"Do I ride Is-spai-u?" I asked.
"Not to-day. Ride the men's horses, you two. Any old plug is fast enough to keep out of the way of a war party on foot."
Pitamakan and I were not long in getting off. We rode down through the head of the grove, crossed the Musselshell and went on, not upon the trail that the enemy had followed, but above it along the steep bad-land slope, until we could see the whole length of the trail from the junction of the two rivers on down into the next bottom, where there was a thin fringe of cottonwoods and willows.
We got down from our horses, tethered them to some juniper-brush, and scooped out comfortable sitting-places upon the steep slope. From where we sat the lower end of the grove at the mouth of the Musselshell was in sight, and well beyond it on the high ground that bordered the Missouri was our barricaded camp. Looking again into the bottom below, we saw a small bunch of bighorns, old rams apparently, heading down into its lower end; going to drink at the river, of course. Bighorns were plentiful then and for many years afterwards in all the Missouri bad-land country. A fine early morning breeze was blowing down the valley. I called Pitamakan's attention to it, and said that, if the enemy were concealed in the timber, the bighorns would apprise us of the fact. Bighorns leave their cliffs and steep slopes only when need of water or of food compels them to do so. Those we were watching traveled freely enough down the slope, but the moment they stepped out upon the level bottom land they became timid, advancing but a few steps at a time and pausing to sniff the air and stare in all directions. In this manner they crossed the narrow bottom, descended the gravelly shore below the end of the timber, and drank. We had proof enough that the Assiniboins were not in the timber.
"The gods are with us; they make the animals do scout work for us!" Pitamakan exclaimed.
"I am wholly of the opinion that the cut-throats are upon their homeward way," I said, "and that they will return with a couple of hundred warriors and try to wipe us out!"
"Yes, sooner or later we are in for a fight with them. But something tells me we are not yet through with Sliding Beaver's men."
We sprang to our feet. The west wind brought plainly to our ears the sound of shots and yells up in the big grove and the frightened cries of women in our camp above it.
"There! What did I tell you!" Pitamakan exclaimed.
"How in the world could they have got back in there without our knowing it?" I cried.