FAR THUNDER RIDS THE PLAINS OF A RASCAL
We crossed the river and rode up Sacajawea Creek to the valley. Then we
climbed to the rim of the plain and rode along it to camp. I had
constantly to hold in Is-spai-u so that Pitamakan, riding my fast
buffalo-runner, could keep up with me. It was dusk when we arrived in
camp. The women--some of them, not Tsistsaki, you may be sure--cried out
in alarm at the news that we had found the fresh trail of a war party
traveling down the valley, and Louis wailed, "Pauvre me! Pauvre me! I am
lose my pension; and now I shall be keeled by zese war parties! Oh, wat
a countree terrible ees zis!"
"Oh, be still, Windy!" Sol Abbott growled at him. "You make us all
tired! Be a man!"
Solomon Abbott, a lank, red-haired Missourian six feet two inches in
height, a famous plainsman and trapper and a brave and kindly fellow,
was our best man. He was helping in our work only because of his great
liking for my uncle. As soon as our post was built, he would again go
out with his woman upon his lone pursuit of the beaver. The Blackfeet
had affectionately named him Great Hider, because he was so crafty in
escaping from the enemy. He had had many thrilling escapes from the
Assiniboins, the Sioux, and the Crows, and had killed so many of them
that they had come to believe that he was proof against their arrows and
bullets.
"Well, Sol," said my uncle to him now, "it is best to have the horses
right here in the barricade with us this night, don't you think?"
"Sure thing! Right in here, and some of us on guard all night!" he
answered.
Some of the men were sent to bring in the animals that were picketed
near by, and Tsistsaki called Pitamakan and me to eat. Abbott presently
came into our lodge, and my uncle and he decided upon the different
watches for the night. Pitamakan, my uncle, and I were to take our turn
at two o'clock and watch until daylight, about four o'clock, when the
horses were to be taken out to graze. A night in the stockade would be
no hardship to them, for the new grass was so luxuriant that they would
eat all that they could hold.
Another point of discussion was whether the cannon should be loaded and
made ready for the expected attack. Pitamakan and I were asked how many
we thought there might be in the war party and replied that there were
between fifteen and twenty men, certainly not more than twenty-five.
"Well, we'll load the cannon, because it should be loaded and kept
loaded and the touch-hole well protected from dampness," said my uncle,
"but we will not fire it at any small war party; our rifles can take
care of them. We will just keep the cannon cached, as a surprise when a
big war party comes."
The lodge fires did not burn long that night. Pitamakan and I went to
sleep while our elders were still smoking and talking.
Promptly on time Abbott came into our lodge and awakened us, and my
uncle, Pitamakan, and I were soon in our places at the edge of the
barricade. There was a piece of a moon, the stars were very bright, and
in the north there was a perceptible whitish glow in the sky, as if from
some far distant aurora playing upon the snow and ice of the
always-winter land. Pitamakan, coming and standing at my side, said that
Cold-Maker was dancing up there and making medicine for the attack upon
the sun that he would begin a few moons hence.
"The old men, our wise ones, say," he went on, "that Cold-Maker may
sometime obtain what he is ever seeking, a medicine so powerful that it
will enable him to drive the sun far, far into the south and keep him
there. Think how terrible it would be! Our beautiful prairies and
mountains would become an always-winter land! The game, the trees and
brush and grasses, would all die off, and we, of course, should perish
with them!"
"Don't you worry about that!" I told him. "Sun has a certain trail to
follow, and he is all-powerful. Let him make what medicine he may, old
Cold-Maker cannot halt his course!"
"Ha! That is my thought, too. Wise though our old men are, they
certainly don't know all about what is going on up there in the sky!"
Off to the south of us I heard my uncle mutter something about youthful
philosophers and then laugh quietly.
From where we stood, with our shoulders and heads concealed by some
brush stuck into the barricade, we could see the black mass of the grove
and the silvery gleam of the river sweeping by it. The hush and quiet of
the night were almost unbroken; not even an owl was hooting. The only
sound that we could hear at all was the murmur of the river close under
the cutbank on our left. The Missouri is a deceptive river. Though its
heaving, eddying, swift flow is apparently without obstructions, yet it
has a voice--an insistent, deep, plaintive voice that rises and falls
and makes the listener imagine things; that seems to be trying to tell
all the strange scenes and changes it has witnessed down through the
countless ages of its being.
"Do you hear it, the voice, the singing of the river? Isn't it
beautiful?" I said.
"It is terrible, heart-chilling. What you hear is not the voice of the
river; it is the singing of the dread Under-Water People who live down
there in its depths and ever watch for a chance to drag us down to our
death!"
My uncle slipped up behind us so quietly that we were startled. "You
youngsters quit talking; use your eyes instead of your mouths!" he
whispered, and stole back to his stand on the south side of the
enclosure.
"We were and we are using our eyes, but maybe we were talking too loud;
we will whisper from now on," said Pitamakan.
"Do you think that the war party discovered our camp last evening?" I
asked.
"They were coming this way and had plenty of time before dark to arrive
in the grove down there where is all the chopping. No doubt they saw us
ride out of the valley and along its rim. Yes, almost-brother, you may
be sure that they have seen our camp. Will they try to break in here and
take our horses? Hide in the grove and attack the men when they go to
work? Go their way without attempting to trouble us? Ha! I wonder!"
An hour passed, perhaps more; and then from the direction of the grove
we saw a dark form slowly approaching us; then came more forms, all upon
hands and knees, sneaking through the grass like so many wolves.
Pitamakan nudged me with his elbow. "Don't shoot until they come quite
close," he whispered. I answered him by pressing his arm.
Meantime my uncle had also discovered the enemy and now came to us,
crouching low and stepping noiselessly; he got between us and whispered:
"Aim at men at right and at left. I will shoot at a center man. Pull
trigger when I say _now_!"
I selected my mark, the man at the extreme end of the line nearest the
river, and anxiously awaited the word to fire. I thought that my uncle
would never give it; the longer I aimed at my mark the worse my rifle
seemed to wabble; the bead sight made circles all round the outline of
the creeping man. At last, "Now!" or rather, "Kyi!" my uncle said and
pulled the trigger as he said it. The flash from his gun blinded me for
a moment, and I did not fire. But Pitamakan's rifle cracked, even a
little before my uncle fired, and we heard a groan and a sharp cry of
pain. My vision came back to me. I saw fifteen or twenty men running
from us, making for the grove. I fired at one of them, and missed. After
all my experience in shooting at night at the word of command, I had
been too slow!
Right after I fired, the aroused men came running with weapons in hand,
and the women, crouching low within the lodges, hushed the children as
best they could.
"What is up? What did you fire at? Where is the enemy?" the men cried,
crowding close to us. My uncle was hurriedly answering them when, from
down near the grove, ten or twelve guns spit fire at us, and we heard
several balls thud into the logs in front of us, and one ripped through
the leather skin of a lodge. We ducked, and the men returned the enemy
fire.
"Well, Wesley, I call this downright mean of you!" Sol Abbott said to my
uncle reproachfully. "Why on earth didn't you let us in on this? Why
didn't you call me, anyhow? Pluggin' these here cut-throat night raiders
is my long suit, and you know it! Here you've had all the sport
yourself! 'Twasn't fair, by gum!"
"Oh, well, they were but few. I knew that they would run as soon as we
fired. I didn't think it worth while to awaken you. I really believe
that I never gave you a thought."
"You got one of them!" some one exclaimed.
"Two! Two of them are lying out there in the grass," I said. I had had
my eyes upon them all the time I was reloading my rifle.
"Perhaps they are not dead; we'll go out and soon finish them off,"
Abbott proposed.
"You shall not!" my uncle exclaimed. But he was too late; Pitamakan was
already over the barricade and running to the enemy that he had shot. We
saw him stoop over the fallen man, then rise with a bow and a shield
that he waved aloft with his free hand.
"I count coup upon this enemy. I call upon you, Far Thunder, and you,
almost-brother, to witness that I take these weapons from this enemy
that I have killed!"
"We hear you!" I answered.
"Far Thunder," he called to my uncle, "come and take the weapons of your
kill!"
My uncle laughed. "I am past all that," he began, but never finished
what he intended to say.
"Far Thunder, my man," Tsistsaki interrupted, "think how proud of you I
shall be when those weapons out there are hung with the others that you
have taken upon the walls of the home that we are building here! As you
love me, go out and count your coup!"
So, to please her, and, I doubt not, with no little pride in what he had
accomplished, my uncle went out to his fallen enemy and leaned over
him; then, with a flintlock gun in his hand, he suddenly straightened up
and cried, in the Blackfoot tongue, of course:
"I call upon you all to witness that I killed this man! I count coup
upon one of our greatest enemies, a chief of the Assiniboins, Sliding
Beaver!"
Oh, how we shouted when we heard that name! We could hardly believe our
ears. And Tsistsaki sprang over the barricade and ran toward my uncle,
crying, "Are you sure?" We all followed her and gathered round the
fallen man, forgetting in the excitement of the moment that we were
offering a large and compact mark to the guns of his followers. Day was
beginning to break, and we could see the man's features fairly well--the
massive, big-nosed, cruel-mouthed face, with the broad scar across the
forehead, mark of the lance of our chief, Big Lake.
"He is Sliding Beaver and no other!" Sol Abbott cried. "Wesley, my old
friend, here's to you! You sure have rid these plains of the most
blood-thirsty rascal, the meanest, low-down murderer, that ever
traipsed across them."
No fear of the enemy could now hold back the other women of our camp.
They came running to us with their children squawling after them, for
the moment forgotten. Crowding round my uncle, they chanted over and
over:
"A great chief is Far Thunder! Oho! Aha! Our enemy he has killed! He has
killed Sliding Beaver, the cut-throat chief!"
"Well, what shall we do with him--and the other one?" I asked.
"Into the river they go!" Abbott answered. And in they went with big
splashes. As they sank, Pitamakan cried out, "Under-Water People! We
give to you these bodies! If you can injure them still more than we have
done, we pray you to do so!"
It was now broad daylight. After the enemy had fired their lone,
long-range volley at us we heard no more from them, nor could we see
them; they were doubtless down in the grove. We returned to the
stockade, and my uncle told a couple of the men to take the horses out
to graze; but they did not go far out with them. The women hurried into
the lodges and began preparing breakfast, singing, many of them, the
song of victory. They were happy over the death of the dread Assiniboin
chief. We remained outside, watching the valley and counting up the
record of his terrible deeds, so far as we knew them. Trading entirely
with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, he had always been an enemy of
the American Fur Company and at various times had waylaid and killed
eight of its trappers. Pitamakan said that he had killed four men and
seven women of his tribe, and then recounted the well-known tale of his
fight with Big Lake.
Leading about a hundred mounted warriors, Sliding Beaver had approached
a camp of the Pikuni and signaled that he had come to fight its chief.
The challenge was accepted, and presently Big Lake, armed with only a
lance, rode out to meet him. The Assiniboin was carrying a gun and a bow
and had no lance.
"You proposed this fight, so you must use the weapons of my choice; go
get a lance from your warriors."
Sliding Beaver rode back to them, left his gun and bow, borrowed a
lance, and, raising the Assiniboin war song in his terrible voice,--a
thunderous voice it was,--wheeled his horse about and rode straight at
Big Lake, who likewise charged at him. They neared each other at
tremendous speed, and Big Lake tried to force his horse right against
the other animal; but at the last Sliding Beaver turned the animal aside
and they swept past. They lunged out with their lances, and Big Lake
slightly wounded the Assiniboin in his shoulder, getting not even a
scratch in return. Then again they charged, and Big Lake, sure that his
enemy would not meet him fairly, swerved his horse to the right just as
the other was doing likewise, dodged Sliding Beaver's thrust, and with
his spear gave him a glancing blow on the forehead that laid open the
skin, but failed to pierce the bone. But Sliding Beaver reeled in his
saddle from the force of it, and a mighty shout went up from the
Pikuni, for they thought he would fall from his horse.
He recovered his seat, however, and fled far, far out across the plain.
Big Lake, try as he would, could not overtake him. His followers fled as
soon as they saw that he was running away, and the Pikuni killed a
number of them. The victory was without question with Big Lake; he had
not only wounded Sliding Beaver in fair combat, but in the presence of a
hundred of his warriors had proved him to be a coward.
"I'll bet he told his warriors he had broken his lance and had to flee,
and that he did break it against a rock before his men overtook him!" my
uncle exclaimed.
Long afterwards we learned he had done that very thing.
The women presently called us all to eat. We washed and went inside, and
Tsistsaki said to my uncle, "Chief, and chief-killer, be seated. Eat the
food of chiefs!" Setting before him a huge dish of boiled boss ribs and
a piece of berry pemmican as large as my two fists, she served
Pitamakan and me equally large portions of the rich food, and gave us
cups of strong coffee and slices of sour-dough bread. We ate with
tremendous appetite, having been up so long, but I could see that my
uncle was worried about something; I surmised what it was before he
said: "Well, Thomas, our troubles begin. Without doubt Sliding Beaver's
followers are cached down there in the grove. I dare not take the men to
work this morning."
"What did he say?" Pitamakan asked Tsistsaki. She told him.
"I can see no help for it," said my uncle; "the men must remain in camp
to-day, for those cut-throats are doubtless in the grove lying in wait."
"Yes, and they may remain there more than one day; they may hold up our
work many days," Tsistsaki put in.
Just then we heard a woman cry, "Oh, look! Look! The cut-throats are
going!"
We all ran outside and looked where she was pointing. Below the mouth of
the Musselshell, the Missouri bent toward the south and swept the base
of a high, cut bluff. The enemy were ascending it, heading, apparently,
for the next bottom below. We counted seventeen men, about the number
that we thought there should be.
"Ha! All is well!" my uncle cried. "Men, finish your breakfast and let
us get to work!"
We went back to our lodge, and when Tsistsaki had poured us fresh coffee
Pitamakan said to my uncle: "Far Thunder, those cut-throats could have
sneaked away without our knowing it. I believe that they wanted us to
see them going. Why? Because they intend to sneak back, perhaps to-day,
maybe to-morrow, and surprise the men when they are working down there
in the timber."
Abbott had come in. My uncle turned to him and said: "You heard what he
said. What do you think about it? What do you advise?"
"Well, how would it do for Thomas and Pitamakan to go down and watch
that trail running over the bluff and on down the river, and for me to
watch the breaks of the Musselshell and its valley above the grove?
Then, if the cut-throats should come sneaking back, either the boys or I
would discover them in time to warn you and the men."
"You have said it!" my uncle exclaimed. "You boys, take some
middle-of-the-day food, saddle your horses, and go watch that trail!"
"Do I ride Is-spai-u?" I asked.
"Not to-day. Ride the men's horses, you two. Any old plug is fast enough
to keep out of the way of a war party on foot."
Pitamakan and I were not long in getting off. We rode down through the
head of the grove, crossed the Musselshell and went on, not upon the
trail that the enemy had followed, but above it along the steep bad-land
slope, until we could see the whole length of the trail from the
junction of the two rivers on down into the next bottom, where there was
a thin fringe of cottonwoods and willows.
We got down from our horses, tethered them to some juniper-brush, and
scooped out comfortable sitting-places upon the steep slope. From where
we sat the lower end of the grove at the mouth of the Musselshell was in
sight, and well beyond it on the high ground that bordered the Missouri
was our barricaded camp. Looking again into the bottom below, we saw a
small bunch of bighorns, old rams apparently, heading down into its
lower end; going to drink at the river, of course. Bighorns were
plentiful then and for many years afterwards in all the Missouri
bad-land country. A fine early morning breeze was blowing down the
valley. I called Pitamakan's attention to it, and said that, if the
enemy were concealed in the timber, the bighorns would apprise us of the
fact. Bighorns leave their cliffs and steep slopes only when need of
water or of food compels them to do so. Those we were watching traveled
freely enough down the slope, but the moment they stepped out upon the
level bottom land they became timid, advancing but a few steps at a time
and pausing to sniff the air and stare in all directions. In this manner
they crossed the narrow bottom, descended the gravelly shore below the
end of the timber, and drank. We had proof enough that the Assiniboins
were not in the timber.
"The gods are with us; they make the animals do scout work for us!"
Pitamakan exclaimed.
"I am wholly of the opinion that the cut-throats are upon their homeward
way," I said, "and that they will return with a couple of hundred
warriors and try to wipe us out!"
"Yes, sooner or later we are in for a fight with them. But something
tells me we are not yet through with Sliding Beaver's men."
We sprang to our feet. The west wind brought plainly to our ears the
sound of shots and yells up in the big grove and the frightened cries of
women in our camp above it.
"There! What did I tell you!" Pitamakan exclaimed.
"How in the world could they have got back in there without our knowing
it?" I cried.