"They did better than that in our Sliding Beaver fight," I said.
"So they did, and they probably will be of some help when another real fight takes place. I have just given them my opinion of their actions in a way they will not soon forget," said my uncle.
We washed and had breakfast while the old men still sang their quaint song of victory. Afterwards, when we went out, old Lame Wolf was cutting the claws from his coup. He did not want the hide, nor did we; the hair was the old, sunburned, and ragged winter coat. So the engagés hitched an unwilling team to the carcass, dragged it to the edge of the river-bank, and rolled it into the water. They all then went down into the grove, and the Tennessee Twins came up from it for their breakfast and their sleep. The night had been quiet down there. One of them had come to learn the cause of the firing in camp and had gone back, my uncle said, almost bursting with anger at the cowardly and disgraceful exhibition the engagés had made of themselves.
That day Pitamakan and I had Tsistsaki waken us shortly before noon, and when my uncle and Abbott returned to the lodge for dinner we proposed that we be allowed to go to meet the Pikuni and bring them on—a part of the warriors, at any rate—with all haste.
Abbott said he thought we should do that, but my uncle decided against it. If we did not night-herd the horses, he said, they could not work. He thought that the Pikuni would arrive in time to fight the cut-throats.
"I think you are making a mistake, Wesley; you had better let them go for help; we'll probably be needing it sooner than you think," Abbott told him.
If my uncle had a fault, it was that he relied too much upon his own judgment. In reply to Abbott he merely said: "No, we'll take a chance on another day of good, hard work. Then if the Pikuni don't show up, the boys can go look for them."
Pitamakan and I had not much enthusiasm for the afternoon work, and when, about two o'clock, the old Mandans came to us and told us that they were going to scatter out upon discovery we so longed to go with them that we fairly hated our log-laying. Tsistsaki stood by, watching us with pitying eyes, but my uncle, never noticing our dissatisfaction, whistled as he skillfully swung his axe.
"Thomas, boy," he said, "this log-laying reminds me of a church-raising that I attended long ago, 'way back in the States. It was a little log meeting-house that they were putting up, and your father and I lent a hand with the chinking. Your grandfather was the preacher of that sparse congregation, and a mighty man with the axe as well as with the Word."
"How did you happen to leave the States?" I asked.