It was some time before these men understood the movement, but when they did so, every thing was done which men could do to make their position good. But the savages, sheltering themselves in every conceivable way, gradually closed in until scarcely a hundred yards separated them, when they rose from the cover and rushed in with hatchet and knife to do the work assigned them. A desperate struggle followed, hand to hand and foot to foot; but numbers triumphed, and of the twenty-two men who had been appointed to guard the flanks, only eight, and three of these wounded, reached the level where their comrades stood.
These had their hands full, for the trappers were advancing, firing as they ran, and a large party had already effected a lodgment among the scattered bowlders which lay about the mouth of the pass, while the Blackfeet were raining down every possible missile on the heads of the astounded British.
The Sioux, unable to stand the attack, were falling back in confusion, with great loss, and the whites opened to permit them to pass through, while they closed in sullenly to cover the retreat. Sadly thinned in numbers, the band showed a gallant front still, and walked calmly back, pausing now and then to take a shot at the Blackfeet on the rocks, who showed themselves at times, shaking the scalps they had taken in the air, and waking the echoes with their shouts of triumph.
“Look hyar; some one is going to git hurt if this goes on. You’d better let me loose,” Old Pegs said.
“I’ll see you skulped first,” roared Jim Diggs.
“Good-by, then,” replied Old Pegs, tauntingly, as he flung himself out of the saddle suddenly and sprung into a deep fissure which ran close beside the road. “I’m off!”
“Shoot him, durn ye, shoot!” yelled Diggs, as he emptied his revolver into the fissure up which the old hunter was climbing, his form scarcely distinguishable. A volley rattled upward and Old Pegs who had reached a ledge at least twenty feet above them threw up his hands and fell upon the ledge out of sight.
“Done fur!” said Jim, coolly. “He would hev it, ye see. Jump up thar, Boston Jake, and lift his ha’r.”
The man was about to obey, but at this moment the trappers burst in upon them and Boston Jake was forced to go with the rest, and in some haste, for the bullets of the trappers, “deadly aimed and hot,” rattled through the crowded ranks. The slow retreat turned almost to a rout, long before they reached the mouth of the ravine, but at this moment, wild eyed and savage, Rafe Norris broke a way through the ranks of his own men and reached the front.
“Turn, curse you, turn!” he screamed, striking one of his own men a furious blow which brought him to the ground. “Turn, cowards and dogs! Never let it be said that you fled from such as these.”