[pg 231]
There was no wedding that night at the Independence Rock. The Arapahoes saw to that. But there were burials the day following, six of them--two women, a child, three men. The night attack had caught the company wholly off guard, and the bright fire gave good illumination for shaft and ball.
"Put out the fires! Corral! Corral!"
Voices of command arose. The wedding guests rushed for the shelter of their own wagons. Men caught up their weapons and a steady fire at the unseen foe held the latter at bay after the first attack.
Indeed, a sort of panic seized the savages. A warrior ran back exclaiming that he had seen a spirit, all in white, not running away from the attack, but toward them as they lay in cover. He had shot an arrow at the spirit, which then had vanished. It would be better to fall back and take no more like chances.
For this reason the family of Molly Wingate, pursuing her closely as they could, found her at last, lying face down in the grass, her arms outspread, her white wedding gown red with blood. An arrow, its shaft cracked by her fall, was imbedded in her shoulder, driven deep by the savage bowman who had fired in fear at an object he did not recognize. So they found her, still alive, still unmutilated, still no prisoner. They carried the girl back to her mother, who reached out her arms and laid her child down behind the barricaded wagon wheels.
[pg 232]
"Bring me a candle, you!" she called to the nearest man. It chanced to be Sam Woodhull.
Soon a woman came with a light.
"Go away now!" the mother commanded the disappointed man.
He passed into the dark. The old woman opened the bodice over the girl's heart, stripped away the stained lace that had served in three weddings on two sides of the Appalachians, and so got to the wound.
"It's in to the bone," she said. "It won't come out. Get me my scissors out of my bag. It's hanging right 'side the seat, our wagon."
"Ain't there no doctor?" she demanded, her own heart weakening now. But none could tell. A few women grouped around her.
"It won't come out of that little hole it went in," said stout Molly Wingate, not quite sobbing. "I got to cut it wider."
Silence held them as she finished the shreds of the ashen shaft and pressed to one side the stub of it. So with what tools she knew best she cut into the fabric of her own weaving, out of her own blood and bone; cut mayhap in steady snippings at her own heart, pulling and wrenching until the flesh, now growing purple, was raised above the girl's white breast. Both arms, in their white sleeves, lay on the trodden grass motionless, and had not shock and strain left the victim unconscious the pain must now have done so.
[pg 233]
The sinew wrappings held the strap-iron head, wetted as they now were with blood. The sighing surgeon caught the base of the arrowhead in thumb and finger. There was no stanching of the blood. She wrenched it free at last, and the blood gushed from a jagged hole which would have meant death in any other air or in any patient but the vital young.
Now they disrobed the bride that was no bride, even as the rifle fire died away in the darkness. Women brought frontier drafts of herbs held sovereign, and laid her upon the couch that was not to have been hers alone.
She opened her eyes, moaning, held out her arms to her mother, not to any husband; and her mother, bloody, unnerved, weeping, caught her to her bosom.
"My lamb! My little lamb! Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me!"
The wailing of others for their dead arose. The camp dogs kept up a continual barking, but there was no other sound. The guards now lay out in the dark. A figure came creeping toward the bridal tent.
"Is she alive? May I come in? Speak to me, Molly!"
[pg 234]
"Go on away, Sam!" answered the voice of the older woman. "You can't come in."
"But is she alive? Tell me!" His voice was at the door which he could not pass.
"Yes, more's the pity!" he heard the same voice say.
But from the girl who should then have been his, to have and to hold, he heard no sound at all, nor could he know her frightened gaze into her mother's face, her tight clutch on her mother's hand.
This was no place for delay. They made graves for the dead, pallets for the wounded. At sunrise the train moved on, grim, grave, dignified and silent in its very suffering. There was no time for reprisal or revenge. The one idea as to safety was to move forward in hope of shaking off pursuit.
But all that morning and all that day the mounted Arapahoes harassed them. At many bends of the Sweetwater they paused and made sorties; but the savages fell back, later to close in, sometimes under cover so near that their tauntings could be heard.
Wingate, Woodhull, Price, Hall, Kelsey stationed themselves along the line of flankers, and as the country became flatter and more open they had better control of the pursuers, so that by nightfall the latter began to fall back.
The end of the second day of forced marching found them at the Three Crossings of the Sweetwater, deep in a cheerless alkaline desert, and on one of the most depressing reaches of the entire journey. That night such gloom fell on their council as had not yet been known.
[pg 235]
"The Watkins boy died to-day," said Hall, joining his colleagues at the guarded fire. "His leg was black where it was broke. They're going to bury him just ahead, in the trail. It's not best to leave headboards here."
Wingate had fallen into a sort of apathy. For a time Woodhull did not speak to him after he also came in.
"How is she, Mr. Wingate?" he asked at last. "She'll live?"
"I don't know," replied the other. "Fever. No one can tell. We found a doctor in one of the Iowa wagons. He don't know."
Woodhull sat silent for a time, exclaimed at last, "But she will--she must! This shames me! We'll be married yet."
"Better wait to see if she lives or dies," said Jesse Wingate succinctly.
"I know what I wish," said Caleb Price at last as he stared moodily at the coals, "and I know it mighty well--I wish the other wagons were up. Yes, and--"
He did not finish. A nod or so was all the answer he got. A general apprehension held them all.
"If Bridger hadn't gone on ahead, damn him!" exclaimed Kelsey at last.
"Or if Carson hadn't refused to come along, instead of going on east," assented Hall. "What made him so keen?"
[pg 236]
Kelsey spoke morosely.
"Said he had papers to get through. Maybe Kit Carson'll sometime carry news of our being wiped out somewhere."
"Or if we had Bill Jackson to trail for us," ventured the first speaker again. "If we could send back word--"
"We can't, so what's the use?" interrupted Price. "We were all together, and had our chance--once."
But buried as they were in their gloomy doubts, regrets, fears, they got through that night and the next in safety. They dared not hunt, though the buffalo and antelope were in swarms, and though they knew they now were near the western limit of the buffalo range. They urged on, mile after mile. The sick and the wounded must endure as they might.
Finally they topped the gentle incline which marked the heights of land between the Sweetwater and the tributaries of the Green, and knew they had reached the South Pass, called halfway to Oregon. There was no timber here. The pass itself was no winding cañon, but only a flat, broad valley. Bolder views they had seen, but none of greater interest.
Now they would set foot on Oregon, passing from one great series of waterways to another and even vaster, leading down to the western sea--the unknown South Sea marked as the limits of their possessions by the gallants of King Charles when, generations earlier, and careless of all these intervening generations of toil and danger, they had paused at the summit of Rockfish Gap in the Appalachians and waved a gay hand each toward the unknown continent that lay they knew not how far to the westward.
[pg 237]
But these, now arrived halfway of half that continent, made no merriment in their turn. Their wounded and their sick were with them. The blazing sun tried them sore. Before them also lay they knew not what.
And now, coming in from the northeast in a vast braided tracing of travois poles and trampling hoofs, lay a trail which fear told them was that of yet another war party waiting for the white-topped wagons. It led on across the Pass. It could not be more than two days old.
"It's the Crows!" exclaimed Sam Woodhull, studying the broad trail. "They've got their women and children with them."
"We have ours with us," said Caleb Price simply.
Every man who heard him looked back at the lines of gaunt cattle, at the dust-stained canvas coverings that housed their families. They were far afield from home or safety.
"Call Wingate. Let's decide what to do," exclaimed Price again. "We'll have to vote."
They voted to go on, fault of any better plan. Some said Bridger's post was not far ahead. A general impatience, fretful, querulous, manifested itself. Ignorant, many of these wanted to hurry on to Oregon, which for most meant the Williamette Valley, in touch with the sea, marked as the usual end of the great trek. Few knew that they now stood on the soil of the Oregon country. The maps and journals of Molly Wingate were no more forthcoming, for Molly Wingate no more taught the evening school, but lay delirious under the hothouse canvas cover that intensified the rays of the blazing sun. It was life or death, but by now life-and-death issue had become no unusual experience.
[pg 238]
It was August, midsummer, and only half the journey done. The heat was blinding, blistering. For days now, in the dry sage country, from the ford of the North Fork of the Platte, along the Sweetwater and down the Sandy, the white alkali dust had sifted in and over everything. Lips cracked open, hands and arms either were raw or black with tan. The wagons were ready to drop apart. A dull silence had fallen on the people; but fatuously following the great Indian trail they made camp at last at the ford of the Green River, the third day's march down the Pacific Slope. No three days of all the slow trail had been harder to endure than these.
"Play for them, Jed," counseled Caleb Price, when that hardy youth, leaving his shrunken herd, came in for his lunch that day at the ford.
"Yes, but keep that fiddle in the shade, Jed, or the sun certainly will pop it open."
Jed's mother, her apron full of broken bits of sagebrush, turned to see that her admonishment was heeded before she began her midday coffee fire. As for Jed himself, with a wide grin he crouched down at the side of the wagon and leaned against a wheel as he struck up a lively air, roaring joyously to his accompaniment:
[pg 239]
Git out o' the way, old Dan Tucker,You're too late to git yore supper!
Git out o' the way, old Dan Tucker,
You're too late to git yore supper!
Unmindful of the sullen apathy of men and women, the wailing of children stifling under the wagon tops, the moans of the sick and wounded in their ghastly discomfort, Jed sang with his cracked lips as he swung from one jig to the next, the voice of the violin reaching all the wagons of the shortened train.
"Choose yore pardners!" rang his voice in the joyous jesting of youth. And--marvel and miracle--then and there, those lean brown folk did take up the jest, and laughingly gathered on the sun-seared sands. They formed sets and danced--danced a dance of the indomitable, at high noon, the heat blinding, the sand hot under feet not all of which were shod. Molly Wingate, herself fifty and full-bodied, cast down her firewood, caught up her skirt with either hand and made good an old-time jig to the tune of the violin and the roaring accompaniment of many voices and of patted hands. She paused at length, dropping her calico from between her fingers, and hastened to a certain wagon side as she wiped her face with her apron.
"Didn't you hear it, Molly?" she demanded, parting the curtain and looking in.
"Yes, I did. I wanted--I almost wanted to join. Mother, I almost wanted to hope again. Am I to live? Where are we now?"
[pg 240]
"By a right pretty river, child, and eena'most to Oregon. Come, kiss your mother, Molly. Let's try."
Whereupon, having issued her orders and set everyone to work at something after her practical fashion, the first lady of the train went frizzling her shaved buffalo meat with milk in the frying pan; grumbling that milk now was almost at the vanishing point, and that now they wouldn't see another buffalo; but always getting forward with her meal. This she at last amiably announced.
"Well, come an' git it, people, or I'll throw it to the dogs."
Flat on the sand, on blankets or odds and ends of hide, the emigrants sat and ate, with the thermometer--had they had one--perhaps a hundred and ten in the sun. The men were silent for the most part, with now and then a word about the ford, which they thought it would be wise to make at once, before the river perchance might rise, and while it still would not swim the cattle.
"We can't wait for anyone, not even the Crows," said Wingate, rising and ending the mealtime talk. "Let's get across."
Methodically they began the blocking up of the wagon bodies to the measurement established by a wet pole.
[pg 241]
"Thank the Lord," said Wingate, "they'll just clear now if the bottom is hard all the way."
One by one the teams were urged into the ticklish crossing. The line of wagons was almost all at the farther side when all at once the rear guard came back, spurring.
"Corral! Corral!" he called.
He plunged into the stream as the last driver urged his wagon up the bank. A rapid dust cloud was approaching down the valley.
"Indians!" called out a dozen voices. "Corral, men! For God's sake, quick--corral!"
They had not much time or means to make defense, but with training now become second nature they circled and threw the dusty caravan into the wonted barricade, tongue to tail gate. The oxen could not all be driven within, the loose stock was scattered, the horses were not on picket lines at that time of day; but driving what stock they could, the boy herders came in at a run when they saw the wagons parking.
There was no time to spare. The dust cloud swept on rapidly. It could not spell peace, for no men would urge their horses at such pace under such a sun save for one purpose--to overtake this party at the ford.
"It's Bill Jackson!" exclaimed Caleb Price, rifle in hand, at the river's edge. "Look out, men! Don't shoot! Wait! There's fifty Indians back of him, but that's Jackson ahead. Now what's wrong?"
The riddle was not solved even when the scout of the Missouri train, crowded ahead by the steady rush of the shouting and laughing savages, raised his voice as though in warning and shouted some word, unintelligible, which made them hold their fire.
[pg 242]
The wild cavalcade dashed into the stream, crowding their prisoner--he was no less--before them, bent bows back of him, guns ready.
They were stalwart, naked men, wide of jaw, great of chest, not a woman or child among them, all painted and full armed. "My God, men!" called Wingate, hastening under cover. "Don't let them in! Don't let them in! It's the Crows!"
[pg 243]
"How, cola!" exclaimed the leader of the band of Indians, crowding up to the gap in the corral where a part of the stock had just been driven in. He grinned maliciously and made the sign for "Sioux"--the edge of the hand across the throat.
But men, rifles crosswise, barred him back, while others were hurrying, strengthening the barricade. A half dozen rifles, thrust out through wheels or leveled across wagon togues, now covered the front rank of the Crows; but the savages, some forty or fifty in number, only sat their horses laughing. This was sport to them. They had no doubt at all that they would have their will of this party of the whites as soon as they got ready, and they planned further strategy. To drive a prisoner into camp before killing him was humorous from their point of view, and practical withal, like driving a buffalo close to the village before shooting it.
But the white men were not deceived by the trading-post salutation.
"He's a liar!" called out the voice of Jackson. "They're not Sioux--they're Crows, an' out for war! Don't let 'em in, boys! For God's sake, keep 'em out!"
[pg 244]
It was a brave man's deed. The wonder was his words were not his last, for though the Crows did not understand all his speech, they knew well enough what he meant. One brave near him struck him across the mouth with the heavy wooden stock of his Indian whip, so that his lips gushed blood. A half dozen arrows turned toward him, trembling on the strings. But the voice of their partisan rose in command. He preferred a parley, hoping a chance might offer to get inside the wagon ring. The loose stock he counted safe booty any time they liked. He did not relish the look of the rifle muzzles at a range of twenty feet. The riders were now piled in almost against the wheels.
"Swap!" exclaimed the Crow leader ingratiatingly, and held out his hand. "How, cola!"
"Don't believe him! Don't trust him, men!"
Again Jackson's voice rose. As the savages drew apart from him, to hold him in even better bow range, one young brave, hideously barred in vermilion and yellow, all the time with an arrow at the prisoner's back, the men in the wagon corral now saw that Jackson's hands were tied behind his back, so that he was helpless. But still he sat his own horse, and still he had a chance left to take.
"Look out!" he called high and clear. "Get away from the hole! I'm comin' in!"
Before anyone fully caught his meaning he swung his horse with his legs, lifted him with his heels and made one straight, desperate plunge for the gap, jostling aside the nearest two or three of his oppressors.
[pg 245]
It was a desperate man's one hope--no hope at all, indeed, for the odds were fifty to one against him. Swift as was his movement, and unprepared as his tormentors were for it, just as the horse rose to his leap over the wagon tongue, and as the rider flung himself low on his neck to escape what he knew would come, a bow twanged back of him. They all heard the zhut! of the arrow as it struck. Then, in a stumbling heap, horse and rider fell, rolled over, as a sleet of arrows followed through.
Jackson rolled to one side, rose to his knees. Molly Wingate chanced to be near. Her scissors, carefully guarded always, because priceless, hung at her neck. Swiftly she began to saw at the thong which held Jackson's wrists, bedded almost to the bone and twisted with a stick. She severed the cord somehow and the man staggered up. Then they saw the arrow standing out at both sides of his shoulder, driven through the muscles with the hasty snap of the painted bowman's shot.
"Cut it--break it!" he demanded of her; for all the men now were at the edge, and there was no one else to aid. And staunch Molly Wingate, her eyes staring again in horror, took the bloody stem and tried to break it off, in her second case of like surgery that week. But the shaft was flexible, tough and would not break.
"A knife--quick! Cut it off above the feather!"
He himself caught the front of the shaft and pushed it back, close to the head. By chance she saw Jed's knife at his belt as he kneeled, and drew it. Clumsily but steadily she slashed into the shaft, weakened it, broke it, pushed the point forward. Jackson himself unhesitatingly pulled it through, a gush of blood following on either side the shoulder. There was no time to notice that. Crippled as he was, the man only looked for weapons. A pistol lay on the ground and he caught it up.
[pg 246]
But for the packs and bales that had been thrown against the wheels, the inmates of the corral would all have fallen under the rain of arrows that now slatted and thudded in. But they kept low, and the Indians were so close against the wagons that they could not see under the bodies or through the wheels. The chocks had not yet been taken out from under the boxes, so that they stood high. Against such a barricade cavalry was helpless. There was no warrior who wanted to follow Jackson's example of getting inside.
For an instant there came no order to fire. The men were reaching into the wagons to unsling their rifles from the riding loops fastened to the bows. It all was a trample and a tumult and a whirl of dust under thudding hoofs outside and in, a phase which could last no more than an instant. Came the thin crack of a squirrel rifle from the far corner of the wagon park. The Crow partisan sat his horse just a moment, the expression on his face frozen there, his mouth slowly closing. Then he slid off his horse close to the gap, now piled high with goods and gear.
[pg 247]
A boy's high quaver rose.
"You can't say nothing this time! You didn't shoot at all now!"
An emigrant boy was jeering at his father.
But by that time no one knew or cared who shot. The fight was on. Every rifle was emptied in the next instant, and at that range almost every shot was fatal or disabling. In sudden panic at the powder flare in their faces, the Crows broke and scattered, with no time to drag away their wounded.
The fight, or this phase of it, was over almost before it was begun. It all was one more repetition of border history. Almost never did the Indians make a successful attack on a trading post, rarely on an emigrant train in full corral. The cunning of the Crow partisan in driving in a prisoner as a fence had brought him close, yes--too close. But the line was not yet broken.
Firing with a steady aim, the emigrants added to the toll they took. The Crows bent low and flogged their horses. Only in the distant willow thickets did they pause. They even left their dead.
There were no wounded, or not for long. Jackson, the pistol in his hand, his face gray with rage and pain, stepped outside the corral. The Crow chief, shot through the chest, turned over, looked up dully.
"How, cola!" said his late prisoner, baring his teeth.
And what he did with this brave he did with all the others of the wounded able to move a hand. The debt to savage treachery was paid, savagely enough, when he turned back to the wagons, and such was the rage of all at this last assault that no voice was raised to stay his hand.
[pg 248]
"There's nothing like tobacker," asserted Jackson coolly when he had reëntered the corral and it came to the question of caring for his arrow wound. "Jest tie on a good chaw o' tobacker on each side o' that hole an' 'twon't be long afore she's all right. I'm glad it went plumb through. I've knowed a arrerhead to pull off an' stay in when the sinew wroppin's got loose from soakin'.
"Look at them wrists," he added, holding up his hands. "They twisted that rawhide clean to the bone, damn their skins! Pertendin' to be friends! They put me in front sos't you'd let 'em ride up clost--that's the Crow way, to come right inter camp if they can, git in close an' play friends. But, believe me, this ain't but the beginnin'. They'll be back, an' plenty with 'em. Them Crows ain't west of the Pass fer only one thing, an' that's this wagon train."
They gathered around him now, plying him with questions. Sam Woodhull was among those who came, and him Jackson watched narrowly every moment, his own weapon handy, as he now described the events that had brought him hither.
"Our train come inter the Sweetwater two days back o' you all," he said. "We seed you'd had a fight but had went on. We knowed some was hurt, fer we picked up some womern fixin's--tattin', hit were--with blood on hit. And we found buryin's, the dirt different color."
[pg 249]
They told him now of the first fight, of their losses, of the wounded; told him of the near escape of Molly Wingate, though out of courtesy to Woodhull, who stood near, they said nothing of the interrupted wedding. The old mountain man's face grew yet more stern.
"That gal!" he said. "Her shot by a sneakin' Rapahoe? Ain't that a shame! But she's not bad--she's comin' through?"
Molly Wingate, who stood ready now with bandages, told him how alike the two arrow wounds had been.
"Take an' chaw tobacker, ma'am," said he. "Put a hunk on each side, do-ee mind, an' she'll be well."
"Go on and tell us the rest," someone demanded.
"Not much to tell that ye couldn't of knew, gentlemen," resumed the scout. "Ef ye'd sont back fer us we'd of jined ye, shore, but ye didn't send."
"How could we send, man?" demanded Woodhull savagely. "How could we know where you were, or whether you'd come--or whether you'd have been of any use if you had?"
"Well, we knew whar you-all was, 't any rate," rejoined Jackson. "We was two days back o' ye, then one day. Our captain wouldn't let us crowd in, fer he said he wasn't welcome an' we wasn't needed.
"That was ontel we struck the big Crow trail, with you all a follerin' o' hit blind, a-chasin' trouble as hard as ye could. Then he sont me on ahead to warn ye an' to ask ef we should jine on. We knowed the Crows was down atter the train.
[pg 250]
"I laid down to sleep, I did, under a sagebrush, in the sun, like a fool. I was beat out an' needed sleep, an' I thought I was safe fer a leetle while. When I woke up it was a whoop that done hit. They was around me, laughin', twenty arrers p'inted, an' some shot inter the ground by my face. I taken my chance, an' shook hands. They grabbed me an' tied me. Then they made me guide them in, like ye seen. They maybe didn't know I come from the east an' not from the west.
"Their village is on some creek above here. I think they're on a visit to the Shoshones. Eight hundred men they are, or more. Hit's more'n what it was with the Sioux on the Platte, fer ye're not so many now. An' any time now the main band may come. Git ready, men. Fer me, I must git back to my own train. They may be back twenty mile, or thirty. Would ary man want to ride with me? Would ye, Sam Woodhull?"
The eyes of his associates rested on Woodhull.
"I think one man would be safer than two," said he. "My own place is here if there's sure to be a fight."
"Mebbe so," assented Jackson. "In fack, I don't know as more'n one'd git through if you an' me both started." His cold gray eye was fixed on Woodhull carelessly. "An' ef hit was the wrong man got through he'd never lead them Missouri men for'rerd to where this fight'll be.
[pg 251]
"An' hit'll be right here. Look yan!" he added.
He nodded to the westward, where a great dust cloud arose.
"More is comin'," said he. "Yan's Bannack's like as not, er even the Shoshones, all I know, though they're usual quiet. The runners is out atween all the tribes. I must be on my way."
He hurried to find his own horse, looked to its welfare, for it, too, had an arrow wound. As he passed a certain wagon he heard a voice call to him, saw a hand at the curtained front.
"Miss Molly! Hit's you! Ye're not dead no ways, then?"
"Come," said the girl.
He drew near, fell back at sight of her thin face, her pallor; but again she commanded him.
"I know," said she. "He's--he's safe?"
"Yes, Miss Molly, a lot safer'n any of us here."
"You're going back to him?"
"Yes. When he knows ye're hurt he'll come. Nothin'll stop him, oncet I tell him."
"Wait!" she whispered. "I heard you talk. Take him this." She pushed into his hand a folded paper, unsealed, without address. "To him!" she said, and fell back on the blankets of her rude pallet.
At that moment her mother was approaching, and at her side walked Woodhull, actuated by his own suspicions about Jackson. He saw the transaction of the passed note and guessed what he could not know. He tapped Jackson on the shoulder, drew him aside, his own face pale with anger.
[pg 252]
"I'm one of the officers of this train," said he. "I want to know what's in that note. We have no truck with Banion, and you know that. Give it to me."
Jackson calmly tucked the paper into the fire bag that hung at his belt.
"Come an' take it, Sam, damn ye!" said he. "I don't know what's in hit, an' won't know. Who it's to ain't none o' yore damn business!"
"You're a cursed meddler!" broke out Woodhull. "You're a spy in our camp, that's all you are!"
"So! Well, cussed meddler er not, I'm a cussed shore shot. An' I advise ye to give over on all this an' mind yore business. Ye'll have plenty to do by midnight, an' by that time all yore womern an' children, all yore old men an' all yore cowards'll be prayin' fer Banion an' his men to come. That there includes you somewhere's, Sam. Don't temp' me too much ner too long. I'll kill ye yit ef ye do! Git on away!"
They parted, each with eye over shoulder. Their talk had been aside and none had heard it in full. But when Woodhull again joined Mrs. Wingate that lady conveyed to him Molly's refusal to see him or to set a time for seeing him. Bitterly angered, humiliated to the core, he turned back to the men who were completing the defenses of the wagon park.
[pg 253]
"I kain't start now afore dark," said Jackson to the train command. "They're a-goin' to jump the train. When they do come they'll surround ye an' try to keep ye back from the water till the stock goes crazy. Lay low an' don't let a Injun inside. Hit may be a hull day, er more, but when Banion's men come they'll come a-runnin'--allowin' I git through to tell 'em.
"Dig in a trench all the way aroun'," he added finally. "Put the womern an' children in hit an' pile up all yer flour on top. Don't waste no powder--let 'em come up clost as they will. Hold on ontel we come."
At dusk he slipped away, the splash of his horse's feet in the ford coming fainter and fainter, even as the hearts of some felt fainter as his wise and sturdy counsel left them. Naught to do now but to wait.
They did wait--the women and children, the old, the ill and the wounded huddled shivering and crying in the scooped-out sand, hardest and coldest of beds; the men in line against the barricade, a circle of guards outside the wagon park. But midnight passed, and the cold hours of dawn, and still no sign came of an attack. Men began to believe the dust cloud of yesterday no more than a false alarm, and the leaders were of two minds, whether to take Jackson's counsel and wait for the Missourians, or to hook up and push on as fast as possible to Bridger's fort, scarce more than two hard days' journey on ahead. But before this breakfast-hour discussion had gone far events took the decision out of their hands.
[pg 254]
"Look!" cried a voice. "Open the gate!"
The cattle guards and outposts who had just driven the herd to water were now spurring for shelter and hurrying on the loose stock ahead of them. And now, from the willow growth above them, from the trail that led to the ford and from the more open country to the westward there came, in three great detachments, not a band or a body, but an army of the savage tribesmen, converging steadily upon the wagon train.
They came slowly, not in a wild charge, not yelling, but chanting. The upper and right-hand bodies were Crows. Their faces were painted black, for war and for revenge. The band on the left were wild men, on active half-broke horses, their weapons for the most part bows and arrows. They later found these to be Bannacks, belonging anywhere but here, and in any alliance rather than with the Crows from east of the Pass.
Nor did the latter belong here to the south and west, far off their own great hunting range. Obviously what Carson, Bridger, Jackson had said was true. All the tribes were in league to stop the great invasion of the white nation, who now were bringing their women and children and this thing with which they buried the buffalo. They meant extermination now. They were taking their time and would take their revenge for the dead who lay piled before the white man's barricade.
[pg 255]
The emigrants rolled back a pair of wagons, and the cattle were crowded through, almost over the human occupants of the oblong. The gap was closed. All the remaining cargo packages were piled against the wheels, and the noncombatants sheltered in that way. Shovels deepened the trench here or there as men sought better to protect their families.
And now in a suddenmeléeof shouts and yells, of trampling hoofs and whirling colors, the first bands of the Crows came charging up in the attempt to carry away their dead of yesterday. Men stooped to grasp a stiffened wrist, a leg, a belt; the ponies squatted under ghastly dragging burdens.
But this brought them within pistol range. The reports of the white men's weapons began, carefully, methodically, with deadly accuracy. There was no panic. The motionless or the struggling blotches ahead of the wagon park grew and grew. A few only of the Crows got off with bodies of their friend's or relatives. One warrior after another dropped. They were used to killing buffalo at ten yards. The white rifles killed their men now regularly at a hundred. They drew off, out of range.
Meantime the band from the westward was rounding up and driving off every animal that had not been corralled. The emigrants saw themselves in fair way to be set on foot.
Now the savage strategy became plain. The fight was to be a siege.
[pg 256]
"Look!" Again a leader pointed.
Crouched now, advancing under cover of the shallow cut-bank, the headdresses of a score of the Western tribesmen could be seen. They sank down. The ford was held, the water was cut off! The last covering fringe of willows also was held. On every side the black-painted savages sat their ponies, out of range. There could be no more water or grass for the horses and cattle, no wood for the camp.
There was no other concerted charge for a long time. Now and then some painted brave, chanting a death song, would ride slowly toward the wagon park, some dervish vow actuating him or some bravado impelling him. But usually he fell.
It all became a quiet, steady, matter-of-fact performance on both sides. This very freedom from action and excitement, so different from the gallant riding of the Sioux, was more terrifying than direct attacken masse, so that when it came to a matter of shaken morale the whites were in as bad case as their foes, although thus far they had had no casualty at all.
There lacked the one leader, cool, calm, skilled, experienced, although courage did not lack. Yet even the best courage suffers when a man hears the wailing of his children back of him, the groans of his wife. As the hours passed, with no more than an occasional rifle shot or the zhut! of an arrow ending its high arc, the tension on the nerves of the beleaguered began to manifest itself.
[pg 257]
At midday the children began to cry for water. They were appeased with milk from the few cows offering milk; but how long might that last, with the cattle themselves beginning to moan and low?
"How far are they back?"
It was Hall, leader of the Ohio wagons. But none could tell him where the Missouri train had paused. Wingate alone knew why Banion had not advanced. He doubted if he would come now.
"And this all was over the quarrel between two men," said Caleb Price to his friend Wingate.
"The other man is a thief, Cale," reiterated Wingate. "He was court-martialed and broke, dishonorably discharged from the Army. He was under Colonel Doniphan, and had control of subsistence in upper Mexico for some time. He had the regimental funds. Doniphan was irregular. He ran his regiment like a mess, and might order first this officer, then that, of the line or staff, to take on his free-for-all quartermaster trains. But he was honest. Banion was not. He had him broken. The charges were filed by Captain Woodhull. Well, is it any wonder there is no love lost? And is it any wonder I wouldn't train up with a thief, or allow him to visit in my family? By God! right now I wouldn't; and I didn't send for him to help us!"
"So!" said Caleb Price. "So! And that was why the wedding--"
"Yes! A foolish fancy of a girl. I don't know what passed between her and Banion. I felt it safer for my daughter to be married, as soon as could be, to another man, an honest man. You know how that came out. And now, when she's as apt to die as live, and we're all as apt to, you others send for that renegade to save us! I have no confidence that he will come. I hope he will not. I'd like his rifles, but I don't want him."
[pg 258]
"Well," said Caleb Price, "it is odd how his rifles depend on him and not on the other man. Yet they both lived in the same town."
"Yes, one man may be more plausible than another."
"Yes? I don't know that I ever saw a man more plausible with his fists than Major Banion was. Yes, I'll call him plausible. I wish some of us--say, Sam Woodhull, now--could be half as plausible with these Crows. Difference in men, Jess!" he concluded. "Woodhull was there--and now he's here. He's here--and now we're sending there for the other man."
"You want that other man, thief and dishonest as he is?"
"By God! yes! I want his rifles and him too. Women, children and all, the whole of us, will die if that thief doesn't come inside of another twenty-four hours."
Wingate flung out his arms, walked away, hands clasped behind his back. He met Woodhull.
"Sam, what shall we do?" he demanded. "You're sort of in charge now. You've been a soldier, and we haven't had much of that."
"There are fifteen hundred or two thousand of them," said Woodhull slowly--"a hundred and fifty of us that can fight. Ten to one, and they mean no quarter."