“Don’t you intend to charge the grove and endeavor to capture the Pawnee warriors?” said Bill to the Sioux chief.
Young Thunder smiled and shook his head.
“No, no,” he answered. “’Nough to get back our ponies.”
The young scout thought that the Indians were not such terrible fighters as some writers would have them appear, and this impression never changed, although he occasionally met a few that knew no fear.
Two of the Pawnee braves had been killed in this little skirmish, and the warriors rode back to their village carrying the fresh scalps tied on the end of long sticks. The whole village turned out to greet them, yelling like furies. Pandemonium reigned all night, but when old trapper Williams heard that young Bill had ridden in so close to the timber, he said:
“I shall have to keep you at home next time, if I expect to return you to your parents. You are a young fool to approach close to timber where hostile Indians are concealed.”
“Three of our ponies were in the bunch of captured horses,” answered the young scout. “I did not wish to return without them. As for the Sioux, I consider them a lot of cowards.”
The Pawnees had not acted with good judgment in trying to drive off fully one hundred head of horses, so near daylight. For they should have known that the Sioux warriors would be after them, mounted upon their best war-ponies.
The trappers soon bade good-by to their kind hosts and continued on towards the Little Wind River, crossing a rugged and romantic country, where lofty, sky-piercing peaks ascended into the banks of drifting clouds. To the northwest were the Wind River Mountains; to the eastward was the Big Horn Range,—the home of the buffalo, elk, antelope, deer, and grizzly bear. It was a hunter’s paradise, where many different tribes of Indians met on their annual hunt, and often battled for the right to the soil. Hostile war-parties were even now quite numerous in the mountains. At Little Wind River, Evans and Russell picked up a moccasin, showing that the redskins were quite near.