THE STEAMBOAT REFUSES TO STOP
We ran to our horses, untethered and mounted them, and rode toward the
grove as fast as we could make them lope along the steep, soft slope.
The firing and yelling had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I was
almost trembling with anxiety. Was it possible that the enemy by a
surprise attack had killed my uncle and all his men? Pitamakan, whose
horse was the faster of the two, was in the lead. I belabored mine with
heels and rope. When we quartered down to the river trail for the sake
of the better going, the rise of the bluff ahead of us cut off our view
of the grove and our camp. Then, as we neared the foot of the bluff, two
of the enemy appeared on top of it.
"Our men are pursuing them! We've got them! Come on!" Pitamakan shouted
back to me.
We were perhaps a hundred yards from the foot of the bluff, and on our
right, about the same distance off, was the cutbank of the river. We
rode on faster than ever and saw the two men crouch, one with ready bow
and the other with pointed gun. Then, as we arrived at the foot of the
slope, they suddenly sprang up and retreated out of our sight, and
Pitamakan yelled again to me, "We've got them! Come on!"
Our horses panted up the slope, groaning and grunting their protests at
every whack of our ropes. We topped the rise, and Pitamakan's horse
shied at a couple of robes lying close to the trail. Beyond, a couple of
hundred yards away, we saw my uncle and his men running toward us; he
stopped at sight of us and signed, "Go out! They went down off the end
of the bluff!"
We loped to the end of the bank and looked down. It was not a
perpendicular bluff; it sloped to the river at an angle of about eighty
degrees. Two fresh streaks in the dark and crumbling surface showed
where the cut-throats had slid down into the water.
We looked out upon the swift-running river, but could not see the men.
Presently they appeared in the center fully three hundred yards
downstream, swimming swiftly and powerfully toward the far shore. We
sprang from our horses in order to take steady aim at them, but both
dived before we could fire. Holding our weapons ready, we watched
eagerly for them to reappear. But, incredible as it may seem, we never
saw them again until they emerged on the shore five hundred yards below.
They turned and waved their arms at us derisively, and then slowly
walked into the willows that lined the edge of the river.
"Oh, how disappointed I am! When they turned back from us there at the
top of the rise, I was sure that I should soon count another coup,"
Pitamakan lamented.
We turned now to meet the men who were hurrying toward us and who were
almost winded by their steep climb. "Where are they?" my uncle gasped.
"Across the river!" I answered.
I happened to look off at our camp. "A rider is at the barricade," I
said.
"Abbott, no doubt, quieting the women," said my uncle, and added in
Blackfoot so that Pitamakan would understand, "Well, they killed the
Curlew! Shot him in the back of the head, poor fellow!"
"Poor Louis! His troubles are over," I said. I was sorry that we were
never again to hear him bewailing in his falsetto voice the loss of his
pension and his endless other worries.
My uncle went on to explain to us just what had happened. The
Assiniboins had climbed out of the valley in plain view of us, leaving
two of their number, who were probably near relatives of Sliding Beaver,
to avenge the chief's death. Those two had lain concealed in the thick
willows at the upper end of the chopping. Arriving in the timber, all of
our men except Louis, who had gone farther up in the grove to trim and
cut into proper lengths a cottonwood that he had previously felled, had
begun loading logs on the wagons. Then a gun had boomed right behind
Louis; he had toppled over, dead, and the two cut-throats had rushed out
to scalp him. The men had fired and had driven them back into the
willows before they had accomplished their purpose, and they had run
toward the river trail with my uncle and some of his men after them.
It was evident that the two had not seen or heard Pitamakan and me ride
past the head of the grove toward the river trail; we believed that it
had been planned to kill as many of our men in the grove as they could,
and to decoy us down the river, where we might be ambushed by the main
party.
By the time we got back into the grove the men who had been left with
the teams had dug a grave for poor Louis, and one of them had been to
camp with the news of his passing. We buried him while his woman mourned
for him and the other women cried in sympathy.
My uncle had the men knock off work early that afternoon so that the
horses should have ample time to eat before we brought them into the
stockade for the night. Then, while waiting for our evening meal, my
uncle, Abbott, Pitamakan, and I held a war council out by the
river-bank, where the men would not overhear our talk. They were a
timid lot, French engagés all of them, and we did not want them to
suspect how serious we thought our situation to be.
"The older I grow the less sense I have! I should have known better than
to come down here with these few timid engagés to build a fort upon the
most traveled war trail in the country," said my uncle. "I should have
had ten--yes, twenty--more men. I shall send by the next up-river boat
for all the men that can be engaged in Fort Benton."
"Yes, we are in a risky position," said Abbott. "This war party may be
right back at us to-night; they may keep hanging round until they get
more of us. If they have started home, they will be coming again as fast
as they can get here with a big war party. We do need a lot more men,
but I doubt whether even ten more can be engaged in Fort Benton."
"Far Thunder! Almost-brother! Listen to me!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "Not
uselessly are we members of the Pikuni; we have but to let our people
know what danger we are in, and a hundred of them will come to help us
as fast as their horses can carry them. They are just two days' ride
from Fort Benton at their camp on Bear River. Send for them, Far
Thunder, and we will do our best to survive the dangers here until they
join us."
"Ha! That is a life-saving plan you have in that good head of yours! I
will get a letter about it ready right away; a steamboat may turn the
bend down there at any moment! Carroll and Steell will lose no time in
getting a messenger off to camp for us!"
"One more thing," Abbott interposed as my uncle rose to leave us. "If
those cut-throats are going to sneak back into the grove again to-night
and attack us, we have to know it. I propose that these two boys and I
stand watch down there until morning."
My uncle agreed to that, and we went in to eat supper.
At early dusk Abbott, Pitamakan, and I went down into the grove,
accompanied by all the men and women in a compact group. Then all the
others turned back to camp. If the enemy were watching us from the
breaks, they could not possibly count those who went to and from the
grove, and so learn that three of us were remaining in it.
More than once during the night our hearts went thumpety-thump at the
approach of dim and shadowy objects, but the objects always proved to be
elk or deer. Pitamakan watched the river trail, I the breaks from the
middle edge of the grove; Abbott had his stand at the upper end. Along
toward morning I got a real scare when an animal that I thought was a
stray buffalo proved to be a big grizzly coming straight toward me. I
did not know what to do. If I ran, he would probably chase me; if I
fired at him, I might only wound him--it was too dark to shoot
accurately. I looked about for a tree small enough to climb, saw one,
and was on the point of running to it, when the bear turned off sharply
and I heard him slosh through the river.
We maintained our watch until my uncle came down with the men in the
morning and stationed some of them to take our places. We thus had only
six men at work; at that rate we should be all summer and winter
building the fort! As we three were starting toward camp, my uncle told
us that Tsistsaki was to stand watch there over the picketed horses and
that we were to sleep as long as we could.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon, Tsistsaki roused us from our
heavy sleep with the news that the smoke of a steamboat was in sight
down the river. Springing from our couches and running outside, we saw
the black column of smoke about two miles away, and I went down into the
grove to notify my uncle. He hurried back to camp with me and got ready
his letter to Carroll and Steell, and put it into a sack with a stone,
so that he could throw it aboard; then we all went out to the bank of
the river and waited for the boat to come in close at our hail. It
presently rounded the bend a mile or more below and headed up the center
of the broad, straight stretch. How interested I was in watching it,
this freighter from far St. Louis! It had left the city only thirty or
forty days before; what a lot we could learn of the news in the States
if we could have a chat with its crew! I said as much to Abbott, and he
exclaimed, "Oh, shucks! Who wants to know about the hide-bound,
cut-and-dried, two-penny affairs and doings in the States! Here is where
life is real life! Why, a fellow can get more excitement here in a day
than in a lifetime back there!"
The steamboat came steadily on against the swift current, and as soon as
it had passed the bar below the mouth of the Musselshell we fired
several shots, and Pitamakan waved his blanket to attract the attention
of the captain and the pilot; but the boat never changed its course, and
after a few moments of anxious suspense my uncle exclaimed, "Is it
possible that the captain does not intend to come in to us? Fire a
couple more shots! Pitamakan, wave your blanket again."
We fired, waved our blanket and arms, and shouted. The crew on the lower
deck and a few passengers on the hurricane deck came to the rail and
waved greeting to us, and the man standing beside the pilot, evidently
the captain, stuck his head out of the side window of the wheelhouse and
looked at us, but still the boat held its course well over toward the
farther shore; the captain intended to pay no attention to our signals.
That he should not do so was almost unbelievable! My uncle turned red
with anger. "The hounds! They are going to pass me! Me! A company man!
That captain shall smart for this! Can you make out the name?"
I read the name on the wheelhouse. "It is the Pittsburgh," I told him.
"Ha! That explains it," he said. "It is not a company boat. This is its
first trip up the river. The captain is sure a mean man; he will never
get any of my custom!"
"But, Wesley, seems to me you've just got to get that letter aboard,"
said Abbott.
"Yes, I have to! It can be done, and it must! Thomas, Pitamakan, saddle
up, you two, chase that boat, and when it ties up for the night--"
"I had better go with them, don't you think? There's no telling what
they may run up against," Abbott said to him.
My uncle scratched his chin and frowned as he always did when perplexed,
and after some thought exclaimed, "Well, I can't let the three of you
go! The men down there in the timber are about as timid a set of sheep
as ever was. No, Abbott, you'll have to help me here, and the boys must
do the best they can."
Pitamakan ran for the horses. I did not ask whether I were to ride
Is-spai-u; I just brought him in and put the saddle on him. Pitamakan
saddled my runner, for, as you know, his fast horse had had his shoulder
gashed by a bullet. My uncle handed me the letter and told us to be very
cautious, but to get it aboard the boat at any cost. Tsistsaki came
running out and handed us some sandwiches, and we were off.
The Upper Missouri Valley is the worst country in all the West for the
rider. It is fine enough going in the wooded or grassy bottoms of
varying lengths, but between the bottoms are steep slopes and ridges
that break abruptly off into the winding river, and that are so seamed
with coulees, many of them with quicksand beds, that they are well-nigh
impassable.
I did not intend that we should follow the valley until obliged to do
so. On leaving camp we rode on the plain and followed it from breakhead
to breakhead. Occasionally we got a glimpse of the valley far below and
of the smoke of the steamboat puffing its way up the river. We were soon
in the lead of it, for, while we were making seven or eight miles an
hour on a straight course, it was going no faster than that on a course
as crooked as the body of a writhing snake. From the time we topped the
rise above camp we were continually pushing into great herds of
buffaloes and antelopes.
On and on we rode until the lowering sun warned us that we must keep
close track of the progress of the steamboat. We turned down a little
way into the breaks, looking for a well-worn game trail to follow, and
soon found one. I never went along one of those bad-land trails without
wondering how far back in the remote past it had been broken by a band
of thirsty buffaloes heading down from the plains to water. Since that
time how many, many thousands of them had traveled it!
When part way down the long incline, and still all of two miles from the
river, we came to a sharp turn in the ridge, and from it saw the smoke
of the steamboat, not, as we had expected, somewhere down the river, but
all of three or four miles above the point where we should enter the
bottom.
The sun had set, and the night was already stealing down into the
valley; the boat would soon be tied up. There was not a pilot on the
river that would venture to guide a steamboat up or down it even in the
light of a full moon, and this night there would be no moon until near
morning.
"Almost-brother, we have some hard traveling to do!" I said.
"We each have good legs. When our horses fail us, we will use them,"
Pitamakan answered.
The bottom that we were heading into proved to be all of a mile long,
and we traversed it and went over a rather easy point into the next
bottom before real night set in. We had starlight then, just enough
light to enable us to see in a rather uncertain way forty or fifty feet
ahead of our horses. Midway up the bottom we came to the first of our
troubles, a cut coulee that ran across it from the bad lands to the
river. We turned up along it almost to the slope of the valley before
Pitamakan, on foot and leading his horse, found a game trail that
crossed it. Presently we arrived at the point at the head of the bottom,
and could find no trail leading up it, in itself a bad sign. We both
dismounted and began the ascent. Our horses' feet sank deep into the
sun-baked, surface-glazed volcanic ash with a ripping, crunching sound
as if they were breaking through snow crust. Almost before we knew it we
found ourselves on a steep slope with a cut bluff above us and the
murmuring river below us. Our horses began to slip.
"We shall have to make a quick run for it!" Pitamakan called back to me.
The horses slipped and frantically pawed upward in a strenuous effort
to avoid plunging down into the river. We made it and, gasping for
breath, found ourselves upon the gently sloping ground of the next
bottom.
"Almost we went into the river!" Pitamakan exclaimed.
"Don't talk about it!" I replied.
"The Under-Water People almost got us!"
"Oh, do be quiet! Mount and lead on, or let me lead!" I cried.
We went on up through that bottom, across a point, through another
bottom and over a very rough point seamed with coulees. In the next
bottom I called a halt. "The boat must be somewhere close ahead. We can
no longer travel outside the timber; from here on we have to see both
shores of the river--"
"It will be impossible for us to see the far shore," Pitamakan broke in.
"Of course. But the boat has lights burning all night long. We shall see
them," I explained.
We mounted, and I took the lead into the timber close ahead. I let my
horse pick his way, reining him only sufficiently to keep him close to
the river and guiding myself by its sullen murmur. We groped our way
through the timber of that bottom and of another; then from the next
bare point we saw the lights of the boat some little distance up the
river against the blackness of the north shore.
We rode through a belt of cottonwoods and some willows to the head of
the bottom and then out upon a sandy shore right opposite the boat.
White though it was, we could see nothing of it except its two lights,
and they were so faint that we knew the river was of great width. We
dismounted, and I told Pitamakan that I would fire my rifle to attract
the attention of the watchman, and then shout to him, as loudly as
possible, to send a small boat across for us.
I fired the shot; it boomed loudly across the water and echoed sharply
against the other shore. "Ahoy, there! We want to come aboard!" I
shouted, waited for an answer, and got none. Again I shouted, with the
same result.
"Now you fire your rifle!" I told Pitamakan.
He fired it, and then we did get an answer. The flash of a dozen guns
for an instant illuminated the white paint of the boat, and with the
dull booming of them we heard several bullets strike in the trees behind
us!