Pitamakan and I rode in the lead with the chiefs, because in a way we were the guides of the relief party. Behind us came the different bands of the I-kun-uh-kah-tsi, or All Friends Society, each one herding its extra horses. Our pace was so fast that there was little opportunity for talk; and Pitamakan and I had no desire to do so. Our thoughts were with our little camp of besieged people.
At noon we halted for a short rest. The chiefs at once gathered in a circle and began to plan just what should be done at the mouth of the Musselshell; that is, if Far Thunder and his engagés still held the barricade. Pitamakan and I told how they would be suffering from want of water and urged that we ride as straight as we could to their relief.
Then up spoke Heavy Runner, chief of the Braves, and the war chief of the Pikuni:
"It is true," he said, "that Far Thunder and his people, if still alive, must be choking from need of water, but for their own good and the good of all the Blackfoot tribes they must choke a little longer. Should we go charging straight to their barricade, the enemy would see us from far off and have plenty of time to retreat from the bank of the river into the grove, and there make a good fight, kill many of us, perhaps, and escape in the darkness. What we must try to do is to give the cut-throats a lesson that they and their children and their children's children will remember as long as the sun makes the days. I therefore propose that we ride down Crooked Creek into Upon-the-Other-Side Bear River, right into the stream bed, and follow it to the edge of the big grove. There half of us will leave our horses and go on and surprise the enemy under the edge of the bank of Big River and drive them out upon the open flat away from the grove. There we afoot and the other half of us on horseback and Far Thunder with his loud-mouth gun will just let one or two of the cut-throats escape to tell his people what the Pikuni did to their warriors."
Without exception the chiefs approved this plan, but Pitamakan and I made objections. "It is a roundabout way," said Pitamakan, "to go clear to the mouth of this creek and then down the winding bed of the other stream. We haven't the time to do it."
"If Far Thunder and those with him are still alive, their sufferings from need of water are something terrible," I said. "Chiefs, let us leave Crooked Creek right here and strike straight across the plain as soon as possible!"
"I shall say a few words about this!" White Wolf exclaimed. "I have a big interest in that little party down there in the barricade; my own sister is there. And yet I say that as she is suffering, so must she suffer a little longer for the good of the Pikuni. But not much longer. In a time like this what is one horse to any of us? Nothing! We will leave our tired horses right here, and if a Crow or other war party comes along and takes them—well, we shall probably recover them some day. Upon our fresh horses we can go this roundabout way and certainly arrive at the head of the big grove before sundown. Then we will wipe out those cut-throats, every last one of them, before it becomes too dark for us to shoot straight. Come! let us hurry on!"
"Yes! We will do that! There's nothing the matter with the bird's head!" cried Heavy Runner as he sprang up, and all laughed and cheered as we mounted our fresh horses. The chief's slang expression was a favorite one of the Blackfeet, and equivalent to our saying, "I don't care; everything goes with me!"
Away we went, leaving behind us more than three hundred fine horses, fast buffalo-runners every one of them. Occasionally during the afternoon we cut bends, but for the most part we followed the straight northeast course of the valley and at about five o'clock entered the valley of the Musselshell.
Now we had to proceed more slowly, but even when fording, we never went at a pace slower than a trot; and so toward sundown we approached the grove. Heavy Runner brought us to a halt about three hundred yards from it and told Pitamakan to dismount and sneak out to see whether our little camp was still standing. He went, climbing the bank with flying leaps, and then upon hands and knees disappeared from our view into the tall, thick-growing sagebrush. At last he returned, and, as soon as he came in sight, thrust his right hand above the point of his shoulder, with the index finger extended and the others closed. "They survive!"
I almost yelled out my relief when I saw him make that sign!
During his absence the chiefs had decided which of our bands were to go on foot into the grove and which were to remain upon their horses where we were until the battle opened. I was more than glad that the band of which Pitamakan and I were members, the Kit-Foxes, was one of those chosen to go into the grove. Only the Doves, Tails, and Mosquitoes were to form the follow-up party on horseback.
"Not all the cut-throats are under the river-bank in front of the barricade," said Heavy Runner to us as we were starting. "Probably most of them are resting in this grove. As soon as they discover our approach, we must charge and do our very best to drive them from the timber toward the barricade. When the first shot is fired, we charge!"
We soon entered the grove by way of the stream bed. On and on we went, hearing nothing of the enemy until we were almost at the mouth of the stream. There we smelled smoke, and Heavy Runner brought us to a stand, then signed us to move out into the timber to the west. We climbed the bank and, looking through the willows, saw several small groups of the enemy sitting and lying about small fires that they had built. They were all unconscious of our approach, and the nearest were not more than fifty yards from us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pitamakan on my left raising his rifle, and I raised mine and quickly sighted it at one of the reclining figures. Of pity there was not an atom in my heart; as the cut-throats would do to that little band of sufferers in the barricade, so must we do to them, I thought.
I believe that Pitamakan was the first to fire and I second; and then all up and down our line guns boomed and bowstrings twanged. With wild yells of, "Now, Kit-Foxes!" "Now, Crazy Dogs!" "Now, Soldiers!" we rushed out into the open timber after the fleeing enemy. I noticed several of them dead as we passed their camp-fires. If shots had been fired at us I had not heard them. We had stampeded the cut-throats by our sudden attack, and they were running in the one direction that they could go, straight for the bank of the Missouri at the upper edge of the grove. There, for several moments, they made a stand and killed one of our men and wounded three. But we kept pressing closer, and the right of our line gained the edge of the grove at the river, from which they obtained a clear view of the bank and the shore. Numbers of the enemy still under the bank came running down the shore toward the grove to join their comrades who were in the point of it. Some of them fell as our right fired into them. The river-bank was no longer a shelter for them; they had not the courage to attempt to force us back, although, had they known it, they far outnumbered us and could have broken through our line. There seemed to remain but one thing for them to do, and they did it: they broke out from the point of the grove and headed up the valley, intending no doubt to gain the shelter of the tall sagebrush, in which they might stand us off until nightfall and then in the darkness make their escape.
We all halted at the edge of the timber and let them go, well knowing what was about to take place. Hurriedly we reloaded our weapons. As I rammed home a ball on top of a charge of powder poured in by guess I looked out at our barricade and saw the lodges standing in it intact.
"Pitamakan, our relatives survive!" I cried.
"Of course! I so signed to you! See, they are wheeling the loud-mouth out from the passageway!"
But I had no time to look. Our mounted party had followed on after us pretty closely and now broke out from the timber and charged at the enemy. How we yelled when the enemy came to an abrupt stand and then turned and headed back toward the river, shedding their robes, pouches, ropes, everything they carried except their weapons! Right then was my uncle's one chance to fire into them without our being in the line of his aim, and he seized the opportunity.Boom!went the old cannon, andBang! Bang! Bang!sounded the rifles of his men. Though the enemy were far from him, several of them went down.
On sped the others toward the river while we fired into them. Meanwhile our riders were rapidly gaining on them, but not rapidly enough to overtake them before they went leaping down the bank and into the water with furious pawings and kickings and cries of terror and despair. Our whole force soon lined the bank and fired at them, but the treacherous, sand-laden, swirling current of the river took more toll of their number than our shots did.
I could not shoot at the defenseless swimmers; so I called to Pitamakan and we left the bank and ran toward the barricade.
There at the passageway a strange sight met our eyes. My uncle, with parched lips and bloodshot eyes, stood guard with his rifle over Tsistsaki, who doled out a cupful of water to one after another of the engagés, while they, crazed from want of it, alternately called him bad names and cried and begged for more. Now and then one of them ran to scale the barricade and go to the river, only to be forced back by Abbott and the Twins.
"Look at 'em! Look at the pigs!" Josh was exclaiming. "They'd just natcherly drink 'emselves to death if we'd let 'em!"
My uncle turned and saw us at his side.
"Ha! Here are my faithful boys!" he exclaimed in a hoarse, cracked voice.
"Through you we survive!" Tsistsaki said to us, and we could barely hear her strangely pitched voice.
Behind the engagés were their women and children; they, it seemed, had been served first from the two buckets of water that Abbott had brought from the river as soon as the bank was clear of the enemy. I looked over the little crowd, missed the Mandans and asked for them.
"They are down at the river; they will not kill themselves drinking, as these worthless rascals would if they could git to it!" said Abbott.
"There! They have all drunk," said Tsistsaki, taking the cup from Henri Robarre, who was begging wildly for just a little more of the water. Turning, she held a cupful up to my uncle.
"No! You first," he signed. She drank and then he did. Then his voice came back to him and he hoarsely roared to the engagés: "Now, then, you all get back out of my sight until you are called to drink again! I am mighty sick of you and your contemptible whinings!"
"Leave 'em to us, Wesley; we'll herd 'em for you!" Lem called; and with a sigh of relief my uncle turned away from them.
Some of the women were leading the half-dead horses toward us.
"Look at that! They've got a whole lot more heart than their men, those women have!" Abbott exclaimed.
My uncle took Tsistsaki by the hand, and we all four went out to the river-bank. The fight was over, and the Pikuni on horseback and on foot were going about counting the dead cut-throats and counting coup upon them, too. Whereupon Pitamakan cried, "How could I have forgotten? I have a coup to count down there in the timber."
He went from us as fast as he could run.
Abbott and the women came to the head of the water trail with the horses and began relieving their torment with a bucketful all round. Back in the barricade we could hear the engagés begging the Twins to turn them loose. The five old Mandans came up from the water and one by one gravely shook my hand.
"We survive!" Lame Wolf signed to me. "I knew that you would bring the Pikuni in time; my medicine told me that you would be here before the setting of this sun. And here you are! The sun is good to us!"
"Yes. Good to us!" I answered.
I had no more than told my uncle and Tsistsaki briefly of our ride in quest of the Pikuni and listened to a short account of their trials with the thirst-crazed engagés when in the gathering dusk White Wolf and Heavy Runner and the other chiefs came up to us. They all knew the old Mandans and affectionately greeted them. Tsistsaki ran to her brother, White Wolf, and embraced him and cried a little with joy at seeing him again. We then all turned to the stockade, and my uncle called out to the Twins, "Josh, Lem, let those rascals go now! If they waterlog themselves it will not be my funeral!"
They made a wild onset upon the bucket of water that the Twins were guarding, upset it, and with strange, wild cries leaped the barricade and rushed to the river. They were just animals, those old-time French Creole engagés! Perhaps it would be better and a little nearer the truth to say that they were just irresponsible children of man's size.
Tsistsaki started a little fire in our lodge; then we all gathered in it. Outside the women were employing every pot in camp to cook meat and boil coffee for our guests. We had to provide for the chiefs and a few of the head warriors only; the others were gathering about fires of their own in the grove, and would have no food until they could kill some meat in the morning. My uncle regretted that we had nothing except coffee to send down to them.
"It doesn't matter," Heavy Runner told him. "They are so happy over what they have done to the cut-throats that they are not thinking about food."
Presently Pitamakan came in, much excited. "Here is news for you, chiefs!" he said. "We have counted forty-one dead, and of that number only seven are cut-throats; the rest are Parted Hairs!" (Kai-spa: Parted Hair: the Yanktonnais Sioux.)
"Ha! That accounts for it!" White Wolf exclaimed. "Your message, Far Thunder, was that we were to help you fight the cut-throats who would come from their far north river; therefore we did not hurry, since we had only half as long a trail to travel."
"That was the word I sent you. I could not know that instead of going back to their people for help to wipe us out, Sliding Beaver's war party would turn to the nearest Parted Hairs," my uncle answered.
Heavy Runner laughed. "All they had to do was to tell the Parted Hairs that you had your Is-spai-u horse here, and they came running."
"And their shadows, ha! How many of them are now on the dreary trail to shadow land!" some one exclaimed.
"There must be a hundred, perhaps two hundred, dead in the river; and of us but two are dead and three wounded!" said Pitamakan.
Pitamakan's estimate of the loss of the enemy proved to be not far from correct. The following spring we learned in a roundabout way from the Hudson's Bay Company post on the Assiniboin River that the total loss of the enemy was one hundred and eighty-two out of the four hundred and more men who had so confidently started south to wipe us out and take our black racer. Of that number one hundred and forty-one had been shot or drowned in the river, and not one of the survivors had reached the shore with his weapons.
Pitamakan and I were so utterly worn-out that we could not take part in the talk and the rejoicings over the defeat of the enemy. As soon as we had finished eating, we took some bedding and went some distance west of the barricade, where we lay down and fell asleep listening to the thunderous triumphant singing of the warriors round their camp-fires down in the grove. We had not recovered our saddle-horses, but well knew that some of our friends were caring for them.
On the following morning every member of our little party of fort-builders awoke with the feeling that our troubles were ended. In honor of the occasion my uncle gave the engagés a holiday and turned the horses out to graze wherever they would. The chiefs remained with us; some of the warriors went back to meet the oncoming caravan of the Pikuni; others scattered to hunt, and still others remained in the grove, resting, singing, talking over with one another every detail of the battle.
In the afternoon Pitamakan and I saddled the three engagés' horses and rode with Tsistsaki to meet the Pikuni, which we did about three miles out on the plain. Long before we met the long caravan we could hear the people singing, laughing, rejoicing over the great news that had been brought to them. They greeted us with smiles and jests as they passed along. Tsistsaki fell into line with White Wolf's family. Then Pitamakan and I sheered off to the heads of the Missouri breaks, killed a couple of mule buck deer, and took home all the meat that our horses could carry with us on top of the loads. That evening, as we looked up the valley from the barricade, how pleasant it was to see the lodges of the Pikuni strung for a mile or more along the course of the river! "Thomas," said my uncle as he stood with me looking at them and listening to the cheerful hum of the great camp, "Thomas, I was rash; I took too great chances in this enterprise. But all is well with us now. We cannot fail to make a big trade here. I can hardly wait for the morrow to resume work upon the fort. You must bear a hand at it when you and Pitamakan are not getting meat for camp."
I did "bear a hand." The engagés, relieved of all fear of the enemy and anxious to move into snug, log-walled quarters, worked as I had never seen them work before. When in due time the Yellowstone II arrived with our large shipment of goods, we had a long stock-room and a trade-room ready to receive it; and in the early part of October the fort was completed, bastions and all, and the engagés were told to get in the winter firewood. At about that time the other tribes of the Blackfeet and our allies, the Gros Ventres, arrived and went into camp at various points along the Musselshell and the Missouri. Crow Foot, chief of the Blackfoot tribe, brought us a letter from Carroll and Steell. I remember word for word a sentence or two in it: "Well, Wesley, by this time you have completed your War-Trail Fort, and you have done it by the merest scratch. Had the Pikuni been a day or two longer in arriving at the mouth of the Musselshell, your scalp would now be hanging in a Yanktonnais lodge. Aren't you the lucky man!"
"I certainly am! And thankful, too, to the good God for all his mercies!" exclaimed my uncle when he had read it. From that remark you will see that he had not altogether forgotten his early religious training.
Perhaps you can imagine how Pitamakan and I kicked up our heels when, one fine October morning, my uncle announced that we were free to roam wherever we pleased. The Pikuni were going to hunt and trap along the foot of the Snowy Mountains and the upper reaches of the Musselshell and its tributaries, and we went with them and had great adventures. At Christmas-time we returned to the fort with more than our full share of beaver pelts.
From then until spring I was kept busy in the fort day after day helping in the trade for the furs and robes that came to us in a perfect stream. In the following June our shipment totaled seven thousand fine head-and-tail buffalo robes; twenty-one hundred beaver pelts; four thousand elk, deer, and antelope skins; and about three thousand wolf pelts. After receiving the statement of the sale of them in St. Louis my uncle clapped his hands and laughed and cried out: "Tsistsaki, Thomas, this is how we stand: all our bills are paid, and we are ahead one good fort and forty-two thousand dollars in cash!"
"Ha! What happiness is ours!" my almost-mother exclaimed.
"And," said I, "we are not asking for goods on credit for next winter's trade, are we?"
The Riverside PressCAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTSU. S. A.