Tawannears shook his head.
"It may be so, but the firing is not at us, brother. Come, let us join Corlaer."
I stood up, musket in hand, and for the first time was aware of the soreness of muscle, joint and sinew. Every inch of my body seemed to cherish its special ache or twinge.
"We are in no condition for fighting," I remarked glumly.
"The warrior fights when he must," returned Tawannears sententiously. "Hasten, brother. Corlaer waits us."
I climbed after him toward the top of the bank where I could barely see the Dutchman's big form huddled in the grass that grew as high as our waists. The sun was declining in the western sky. The wind was negligible. The Mississippi, behind us, was as calm as a ditch-pond, and in the clear, warm sunlight the opposite shore looked absurdly near. It was difficult to believe that our battle to cross it had ended only that morning.
From the crest of the bank an entirely different prospect appeared. Crawling into the grass beside Peter, Tawannears and I peered cautiously over its rustling tips to the wall of the low wood in which Black Kobe had vanished. This wood was half a mile distant. Between it and the river-bank stretched an open meadow. Another half-mile to our left a few scattered clumps of bushes denoted the bank of the Missouri. We were ensconced upon one side of a triangle of land at the intersection of the two rivers, and it was obvious that the fighting going on under cover of the wood was working down into this open triangle. Apparently one body of men were seeking to drive a second body into the cul de sac of the triangle.
Even as my mind formulated this theory there was a flash of color on the edge of the wood and a figure darted into the open. It was an Indian, a tall man, wearing a headdress of feathers such as I had never seen before, a bonnet that encircled the head and reached down between his shoulders, giving him an exaggerated effect of height. He leaped back behind a tree as we watched, fitted an arrow to his bow and loosed it into the recesses of the wood. Then he turned and ran. He had not covered a dozen yards when a shot was fired, and he bounded high in air and fell upon his face.
Other men, similarly dressed, leaped into view, pausing momentarily to take advantage of the last cover of the wood to loose their arrows against whoever was pursuing them. There must have been a score of them, I suppose, all fine, tall warriors, naked but for breechclout, moccasins and headdress; and they ran like antelope across our range of vision. From the wood came occasional reports and a second man plunged to the ground. We heard a shrill yelping.
"Dakota," granted Tawannears.