“How many have you killed?” she asked in surprise.
“Not half as many as I am going to,” I said. “And I have half a notion to start in on some of these black imps that are laughing at me.”
When I got some dry clothes on, a young Indian rode up on a horse and I got him to go and catch the colt for me. He brought the broncho back and helped me tie a strap around him so tight I could just put my fingers under it, then he held the colt while I got on him.
When I said, “Let him go!” the colt leaped into a run and the young Indian followed after me, keeping it out of the brush and away from the horses that were staked around. The colt soon got tired and stopped running. I had a fine ride. After a while we went back to camp and I staked the colt out for the night. The next day I rode the broncho again, and very soon I had it well trained.
It took mother and me some time to gather up my saddle, and when we got it together we could hardly tell what it had been in the first place; but after about a week of mending, we made it a great deal stouter than it was. The next colt was not so fractious and I soon got so that I could ride any of them without much trouble.
About this time we had another stampede. One night a guard came running into camp with the word that he had seen a big band of Crows coming. It was in the middle of the night, but all of the squaws and papooses were pulled out of bed and ordered to get into the brush and stay there till morning. I told mother that I would not go one step without my horse. She said that I could not find him in the dark, but I was certain that I knew right where he was, and off I put with mother after me calling, “Yagaki, Yagaki, come back, come back.” I outran her, however, and happened to find my pinto. Jumping on it I dashed back to mother. She scolded me and told me that the Crows might have got me; but I said I would have to see the Crows before I believed there were any within a hundred miles of us.
The Indians, however, gathered up all their horses and stayed around them all night. Mother, Hanabi, and I went down to the river about a mile away to hide among the willows and trees with seven or eight hundred other squaws and papooses. They made such a racket with their excited talking and crying that no one could sleep. All of them expected to be killed before morning.
But morning came and no Crows. The Indians were mad as hornets, or at least they acted that way. Washakie sent out some men to where the guard said he saw the Crows. They found that he had seen only a big dust and thought it was made by their enemies. I asked Washakie if he thought that there was any real danger of the Crows coming to attack us. He said that he did not think they would come to fight us in this place, but that they might try to steal our horses, or even attack small bands of our Indians if they ran on to them away from camp.
Every once in a while after that we would have a Crow scare. If the Indians saw a cloud of dust, they thought the Crows were after them. They acted like a band of sheep that had been run by coyotes. Every little thing would scare them. It made me tired to see them so cowardly. I told Washakie that I did not think they would fight if they had a chance.
“When are you going to send more Indians out to steal the Crows’ horses?” I asked him.