"Ha! It is well-planned deception, but I shall take no chances with them. I am sure that the brush behind them is full of warriors!" Pitamakan replied.
I somehow believed that for once he was mistaken, and when a moment later the five men started toward us, all making the peace sign and singing a strange, quaint, melancholy song, so weird, so strangely affecting, that it almost brought tears to my eyes, Pitamakan himself said, "I was mistaken! They are men of peace! I believe that they are men of the Earth-Houses People."
We met the strangers at the foot of the slope. They continued their quaint song until we were face to face with them; then their leader, first making the sign that he was one of the Earth-Houses People, as the Blackfeet call the Mandans, embraced me and Pitamakan, and so did the others, each in his turn.
"We are glad to meet you this good day," said the leader to me in the sign language. "We have often heard about you. We know that you are the Fox, the young relative of Far Thunder. We know that your companion is the young Pikuni, Running Eagle. We have come a long way to see and talk with Far Thunder. His camp is close by, there where the two rivers meet, is it not? Yes? We are glad!"
"Our hearts are the same as yours," I replied. "We are glad to meet you this good day. Just up there we have killed an elk. Wait for us until we have butchered it and loaded the meat upon our horses; then we will go with you to Far Thunder."
The old leader signed his assent to the proposal, and Pitamakan and I hurried back up the hill to our work. We were not long at it, taking only the best of the meat; then I told Pitamakan to hurry on ahead and notify my uncle of the Mandans' coming, so that he could meet them with fitting ceremony at the barricade. I then rejoined the visitors, leading my horse and walking with them, and in the course of an hour we were greeted by my uncle at the passageway into camp. One after another they embraced him; then he signed to them that his lodge was their lodge, and he led them into it, where Tsistsaki greeted them with smiles and turned to the big kettles of meat and coffee that she was cooking for them and broke out a fresh box of hard bread.
With due formality my uncle got out his huge pipe, filled it with a mixture of l'herbe and tobacco and passed it to the old leader of the party to light. The old man capped it with a coal from the fire, muttered a short prayer, and, blowing great mouthfuls of smoke to the four points of the compass, started it upon its journey round the circle. The Mandans made no mention of the object of the visit to us, but said that, having heard from the men of the first down-river fire boat that my uncle was building a fort on the great war trail where it crossed Big River, they had thought that a visit of peace should be paid to him. In turn, my uncle asked how the Mandans were faring and told of our troubles with the Crows and Assiniboins. The news of the passing of Sliding Beaver was good news to them; they greeted it with loud clapping of hands and with broad smiles. "Far Thunder," their leader signed, "you must surely have strong medicine. The gods have been very good to you to give you the power to wipe out that terrible, bad man, worst of all the men of the cut-throat tribe. Far Thunder, for what you have done the Earth-Houses People owe you much!"
"I wish that they were all here, all your warriors, for I am expecting to have a big fight with the cut-throats!" my uncle signed.
"We have sent for the warriors of my people to hurry down here and help us, but fear that they will not arrive before the cut-throats appear," Pitamakan put in.
After some inquiries about just what we had done toward getting the help of the Pikuni, the old leader turned to my uncle. "Far Thunder," he signed, "you see us, five old men and almost useless; our weapons, five old north stone sparkers [Hudson's Bay Company flintlock guns] and four bows. But such as we are, Far Thunder, we are yours in this fight with the cut-throats, if you want us!"