Taking no chances with our horses, we picketed them that evening with long ropes close to our barricade, and at bedtime Pitamakan and I went out and slept in their midst; but nothing happened to disturb our rest. At daylight we arose and turned the work-horses loose to graze near by until we needed them. The day broke clear and warm. Up in the pine-clad bad-land breaks that formed the east side of the Musselshell Valley we could see numerous bands of buffaloes, and there were more in the valley itself and in the bottom of the Missouri directly across from us. Hundreds of antelopes were with the buffaloes, and elk and deer were moving about in the edge of the timber bordering the smaller stream. We went over to the Musselshell and bathed, and then heard Tsistsaki calling us to come and eat.
"Now, then, you youngsters," my uncle said to us when we were seated, "the engagés have their instructions, and here are yours. You are not to lift a hand toward the building of this fort, for I have three other uses for you. You are to take good care of the horses, keep the camp well supplied with meat, and be ever on the lookout for war parties."
"Easy enough!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "With so little to do, I see us growing fat, and with fat comes laziness. I see this camp going hungry before many moons have passed."
"You needn't joke," said my uncle, very seriously. "This is no joking matter. Upon the alertness and watchfulness of you two depend our lives and the success of this undertaking!"
"I take shame to myself," Pitamakan said. "As you say, this is important work that you charge us with. If trouble comes, it shall be through no fault of ours!"
CHAPTER II
A HOSTILE TRIBE LEAVES FOOTPRINTS
By the time Pitamakan and I had finished breakfast the engagés had hitched up the teams and gone to cut logs, and my uncle was marking out the site for the fort on level ground just behind our barricade. He had drawn the plan for it while we were coming down the river. It was to be in the form of a square. The south, west, and north sides were each to be formed by the walls of a building eighty feet long, twenty feet wide, nine feet high. The roof was to be of poles heavily covered with well-packed earth. At the southwest and northeast corners there were to be bastions with portholes for the cannon and for rifles. The east side of the square was to be a high stockade of logs with a strong gate in it.
Leaving my uncle at his work, Pitamakan and I watered the saddle-horses and then, saddling two, rode out after meat. We could, of course, have gone into the timber just above the log-cutters and killed some deer or elk, but we wanted first to explore the valley. Here and there were narrow groves of timber with growths of willows between them; and again long stretches where the grass grew to the very edge of the banks.