We, of course, did not proceed without due caution. The very first one of the dead that we approached was one of the two Crows who had tried to entice Pitamakan and me into a peace smoke with them, which would have been our last. We were glad enough that he was one of the dead.
"I killed him," said Pitamakan as we passed on. "I killed him; he dropped when I fired, but I cannot count coup upon him."
"Why not?" Tsistsaki asked.
"Because of that!" he replied, turning and pointing to the engagés. They had come to the body of the Crow and three were pretending to have fired the bullet that laid the enemy low. "I cannot prove that I killed him," he added sorrowfully.
Now the three engagés who had been left on guard in the grove came to us, out of breath and excited, and my uncle promptly ordered them back to their places. We made the round of the dead, the engagés taking their weapons and various belongings; then we went back to the barricade for dinner, first, however, watering and picketing the hungry horses. Later on, when the teams were again hitched, the engagés drove about and gathered up the dead and consigned them to the depths of the big river.
That evening as Pitamakan, Abbott, and I were preparing to go down into the grove for our nightly watch the engagés were celebrating our victory of the day. They had all assembled in Henri Robarre's lodge, singing quaint songs, boasting of their bravery and accurate shooting, and calling loudly for the women to prepare a little feast, for they were going to dance. The women! They were gathered in another lodge, laughing at their men. Otter Woman, Henri Robarre's wife, who was a wonderful mimic, was making the others ache from laughing as she repeated her man's futile protests and his gait when she had driven him home from the gathering of the men who requested their discharge.
"Those women have a whole lot more sense than their men," Abbott remarked.
The night passed quietly. Late in the following afternoon, just after we three had ended our daily sleep, the women cried out that they could see the smoke from a down-river steamboat, and Tsistsaki ran to the grove to let my uncle know of its coming.
He hurried up to the barricade and eagerly watched the approaching smoke. "We shall have help now; you boys will not have to stand night watch much longer. That old tub is bringing plenty of men!"
The boat soon rounded the bend above and drew in to our landing. Two men leaped ashore, and the roustabouts threw their rolls of bedding after them. From the pilot-house Henry Page tossed out to us a weighted sack. "I'm sorry, Wesley, that we couldn't get more men for you. There's a letter that explains it all!" he called. "Well, keep up a good heart; your Blackfeet will soon be with you. So long!" Then the surly captain, standing beside him, rang some bells, Page whirled his big wheel, and the boat went on. The two men came up the bank and greeted us. I had been so intent upon our few words with the pilot that I had not noticed who they were.