ABBOTT FIRES INTO A CLUMP OF SAGEBRUSH
"What do you mean? Sagebrush can't move," I said to her.
"Oh, yes, it can when enemies are behind it, pushing it along!" she
cried. "Hurry! Follow me and stoop low so that you cannot be seen over
the top of the barricade."
Tsistsaki led us to the south side of the barricade, and, lining us up
beside her to look through the narrow space between the top log and the
one next it, told us to watch the sagebrush beyond the picketed
saddle-horses.
They were upon smooth grass. A hundred yards or so farther on were
scattering growths of sage and of greasewood, the outer border of a
growth that two hundred yards beyond became a solid tract of brush from
three to four feet high, which extended a long way up the valley. I
noticed at once that here and there with the near growth of short
bushes were taller, thicker clumps that seemed to be out of place; and
as I looked one of them advanced a foot or two with a gentle quivering
of its top.
At the same time Pitamakan exclaimed: "She is right! Sagebrush can move.
Behind every one of those tall bushes is an enemy!"
"Sneaking in after Is-spai-u!" I said.
"There are twenty or more of them. If they knew that we are but three
guns here, they would rush in upon us in no time!" said Abbott.
"Oh, you talk, talk! Quick! Do something! Save Is-spai-u!" Tsistsaki
hoarsely whispered.
"If we rush out there," said Pitamakan, "the enemy will know that they
are discovered and will charge in and fight us for the horses.
Almost-brother, you and I will wander out there, just as if we were
going to water the horses. The enemy will surely think that is our
intention, but we will lead them toward the river, then bring them round
the north side of the barricade and into it."
"Now, that is a sure wise plan. Go ahead, you two, and meanwhile
Tsistsaki and I will get the loud-mouthed gun across to this south-side
firing-place," said Abbott.
There was here, as in a number of places round the barricade, a
brush-covered space through which the six-pounder could be pointed. The
women of the engagés were in their lodges, and Tsistsaki whispered to us
that she had not told them of her discovery for fear some of them would
make an outcry.
Pitamakan and I sneaked back into the lodge for our blankets and put
them on, first, however, sticking our rifles under our belts and
pressing them close along the left side and leg; then we walked
carelessly out through the passageway of the barricade. We were talking
and laughing, but you may be sure our laughter was forced. When we were
twenty or thirty feet from the barricade he said to me, "Let us pause
here and have a look at the country."
We halted and looked first to the north, then down to the grove, from
which both teams were emerging with wagons loaded with logs. There were
three engagés with the outfit. I pointed to them. "What would they do if
they knew what is ahead of them?"
"They would fly! Their fear would be so great that it would give them
power to grow wings instantly!" Pitamakan grimly answered.
Fear! Well, I was afraid, and so was my almost-brother. Who would not be
afraid in such a situation--just three of us against twenty or more
enemies watching and planning how to get away with our horses and our
scalps, too?
We turned to face the south and scrutinized the tall, thick clumps of
sagebrush standing among the shorter, scattered growth. They never
moved, not so much as a quiver of their slender, pale-green tops.
Pitamakan broke out with a quick-time dance-song of his people and
danced a few steps to it as we neared the horses. I sauntered up to
Is-spai-u, he to his fast runner, and we unfastened and coiled their
ropes. Leading them, we moved on to one after another of the other
four horses, ever with watchful eyes upon those clumps of sage, the
nearest of which was not more than a hundred yards away. We feared every
moment to see them thrown down and the enemy come charging upon us; but
at last we had all the horses in lead and with fast-beating hearts and
rising hopes started toward the river, never once looking back, much
though we wanted to. Pitamakan seemed to know my thought, for he said
cheerily: "Never mind; you don't need to look back. If they make a rush,
Great Hider and Tsistsaki will shout before they can make two jumps
toward us."
[Illustration: AT LAST WE HAD ALL THE HORSES IN LEAD AND WITH
FAST-BEATING HEARTS ... STARTED TOWARD THE RIVER]
Ha! What a long, long way those few yards were to the shelter of the
stockade. At last we rounded it. Breathing freer, we passed along the
north side, led the horses in through the passageway, turned them loose,
and put up the bars across it. Then we pretended to go into our lodge,
but crouched away from the doorway and sneaked over to the two watchers
kneeling at either side of the cannon and looking out across the flat.
"You made it! My! That little song and dance of Pitamakan's, that sure
fooled 'em! He is some actor, that boy," Abbott said.
"Well, what are we to do now--fire the cannon at them? Give them a big
scare?" I asked.
"I don't know what to say. If only Far Thunder were here--" Abbott
began.
"He is coming. Look!" said Tsistsaki.
Sure enough, he was on his way to dinner with three men, leaving three
to guard the grove, as usual. The teams were almost to the site of the
fort. I went out to meet them and told the men to take the horses into
the barricade.
"But the horses, they should be heat ze grass. Yes?" one of them said,
and all looked at me questioningly.
"Well, maybe we shall have a fight before we eat. A war party is cached
out there in the sagebrush," I replied; and they shrank back as if I had
struck them. At the same time I heard some slight commotion within the
barricade. At Abbott's suggestion Tsistsaki was warning the women of
our impending trouble and commanding them to make no outcry.
"Shut your mouth!" I hissed to one of the teamsters, who with upflung
arms was beginning to make great outcry. "Not a word from any of you
now. Just get those horses inside; then pretend to go to your lodges,
but sneak across to the south side and remain there."
I stood by the passageway until the others arrived, and when I had told
them, too, what to do, my uncle said to me as we went crouching in
across the barricade, "The war party is undoubtedly the Crow outfit that
you met the other day."
We joined the others, and Abbott said to him, "We've had a pretty close
call, Wesley."
"Just where are the rascals? Let me see them!" my uncle demanded. He
laughed grimly when we had pointed out to him the tall brush here and
there concealing them. "I'll bet that they are some tired, lying there
in the hot sun and straining themselves to keep the brush upright and
motionless!" After a moment of thought he added, "Tsistsaki, bring me a
couple of firers for this loud-mouth gun."
"I have them already," she answered and handed him a fuse. He stuck it
into the touch-hole of the cannon and poured some fine powder from his
horn in round it. "I will attend to this," he said to us then. "Now,
you, Henri Robarre! You being about as poor a shot as ever cordelled up
this river, you fire at the foot of one of those bunches of tall sage,
just to start this surprise party. You others then do the best you can."
He waited until Tsistsaki had interpreted his words to Pitamakan and
then told Henri to fire. Henri did so. None of us saw where the ball
struck, and I doubt whether he himself knew where he aimed. The loud
boom of the gun echoed across the valley and died away; the smoke from
it lifted, but none of the enemy made a move; not one of their shelters
even quivered.
"Just what I expected! Abbott, let us see what you can do," said my
uncle.
Abbott stood up, head and shoulders above the barricade, took quick aim
and fired at a bunch of the brush; down it fell as the man behind it let
go his hold upon it and with loud yells of warning or command to his
companions ran straight away from us. At that all the others sprang from
their places of concealment like so many jumping-jacks, and those with
guns fired at us before they turned to run. When we fired at them three
went down at once, and two more staggered on a little way before they
fell. At that our engagés took heart and yelled defiance at the enemy as
they hastily began reloading their guns. I heard Abbott calling himself
names for having failed to kill the man behind the brush that he had
fired into.
The enemy, twenty or more of them, were drawing together as they went
leaping through the sagebrush, straight up the valley; and presently
they halted and faced about and with yells of hatred and defiance fired
several more desultory shots at us. That was the opportunity for which
my uncle was waiting. He hastily sighted the cannon at them and lighted
the fuse. The old gun went off with a tremendous roar, and with wild
shrieks of fear the enemy ran on faster than ever, if that were
possible--all but two whom the grapeshot had struck.
"Help, here! Powder and a solid shot!" my uncle yelled.
Those, too, Tsistsaki had ready for us. Abbott and I rammed the charges
in; Tsistsaki inserted a fresh fuse. We wheeled the gun round into
place, and my uncle again sighted it and touched it off. We waited and
waited, and at last saw a cloud of dust and bits of sagebrush puff into
the air close to the left of the fleeing enemy. As one man they leaped
affrightedly to the right and headed for the mouth of a coulee that
entered the valley from the west. Before we could load the cannon again
they had turned up into the coulee and were gone from our sight.
"Well," my uncle exclaimed, "I guess that settles our trouble with that
outfit!" Almost at the same moment a heated argument arose among our
engagés, every one of whom asserted that he had killed an enemy. "Here,
you, the way for you all to settle your claims is to go out there and
show which one of the enemy you each downed!"
Not one of them made answer to that; not one of them wanted to go out
there, perhaps to face a wounded and desperate man. Pitamakan stared at
them, muttered something about cowardly dog-faces, and leaped over the
barricade. Abbott, my uncle, Tsistsaki, and I followed his move, but we
had gone out some distance before the engagés began to follow, moving
slowly well in our rear.
We, of course, did not proceed without due caution. The very first one
of the dead that we approached was one of the two Crows who had tried to
entice Pitamakan and me into a peace smoke with them, which would have
been our last. We were glad enough that he was one of the dead.
"I killed him," said Pitamakan as we passed on. "I killed him; he
dropped when I fired, but I cannot count coup upon him."
"Why not?" Tsistsaki asked.
"Because of that!" he replied, turning and pointing to the engagés.
They had come to the body of the Crow and three were pretending to have
fired the bullet that laid the enemy low. "I cannot prove that I killed
him," he added sorrowfully.
Now the three engagés who had been left on guard in the grove came to
us, out of breath and excited, and my uncle promptly ordered them back
to their places. We made the round of the dead, the engagés taking their
weapons and various belongings; then we went back to the barricade for
dinner, first, however, watering and picketing the hungry horses. Later
on, when the teams were again hitched, the engagés drove about and
gathered up the dead and consigned them to the depths of the big river.
That evening as Pitamakan, Abbott, and I were preparing to go down into
the grove for our nightly watch the engagés were celebrating our victory
of the day. They had all assembled in Henri Robarre's lodge, singing
quaint songs, boasting of their bravery and accurate shooting, and
calling loudly for the women to prepare a little feast, for they were
going to dance. The women! They were gathered in another lodge, laughing
at their men. Otter Woman, Henri Robarre's wife, who was a wonderful
mimic, was making the others ache from laughing as she repeated her
man's futile protests and his gait when she had driven him home from the
gathering of the men who requested their discharge.
"Those women have a whole lot more sense than their men," Abbott
remarked.
The night passed quietly. Late in the following afternoon, just after we
three had ended our daily sleep, the women cried out that they could see
the smoke from a down-river steamboat, and Tsistsaki ran to the grove to
let my uncle know of its coming.
He hurried up to the barricade and eagerly watched the approaching
smoke. "We shall have help now; you boys will not have to stand night
watch much longer. That old tub is bringing plenty of men!"
The boat soon rounded the bend above and drew in to our landing. Two men
leaped ashore, and the roustabouts threw their rolls of bedding after
them. From the pilot-house Henry Page tossed out to us a weighted sack.
"I'm sorry, Wesley, that we couldn't get more men for you. There's a
letter that explains it all!" he called. "Well, keep up a good heart;
your Blackfeet will soon be with you. So long!" Then the surly captain,
standing beside him, rang some bells, Page whirled his big wheel, and
the boat went on. The two men came up the bank and greeted us. I had
been so intent upon our few words with the pilot that I had not noticed
who they were.
Now I was glad when I saw the rugged, smooth-shaven faces of the
Tennessee Twins, as they were called all up and down the river. The
Baxters, Lem and Josh, were independent bachelor trappers who roamed
where they willed, despite the hostile war parties of various tribes
that were ever trying to get their scalps. They seemed to bear charmed
lives. As a rule the American Fur Company had not been friendly toward
independent trappers, but those two men were so big-hearted and had
done us so many favors that we all thought highly of them; and Pierre
Chouteau himself had given orders to all the factors up and down the
river that they were to be treated with every consideration.
"Well, Wesley, here we are," said Lem Baxter after we had shaken hands
all round.
"You don't mean that you have come to work for me?" my uncle exclaimed.
"That's about the size of it," Josh put in.
"You see, 't was this way," Lem went on. "When we heard of the trouble
you were in, and Carroll and Steell couldn't engage any men for you, we
saw it were our plain duty to come down and lend you a hand."
"Who said that we were in trouble?"
"Why, that there steamboat captain, Wiggins," Lem answered. "You see, 't
was this way: Henry Page bawled the captain out fer not allowin' him to
put in here in answer to your hail. So to kind of play even the low-down
sneak begins to blow about the battle you are expectin' to have with the
Assiniboins. Yes, sir, makes a regular holler about it as soon as his
boat ties up in front of the fort. Well, I guess you know them French
engagés. The minute they hear about the Assiniboins Carroll and Steell
can't hire nary a one of 'em for you."
"Well, now, that Wiggins man is a real friendly kind of chap, isn't he?"
my uncle exclaimed. By the tone of his voice I knew that that captain
was in for trouble when the two should meet.
"Still, Wesley, you're in luck," Lem went on. "Who but your own
brother-in-law, White Wolf, should happen to be in the fort when Page
delivered your letter to Steell. As soon as he was told what was up he
said to us, 'You tell Far Thunder that we shall all be with him for that
battle with the cut-throats! Tell him to look for us to come chargin'
down by the Crooked Creek Trail!' Then he lit out for his camp as fast
as he could go."
"Ha! Down Sacajawea Creek. They will cross the river at Fort Benton.
Down the north side would have been the shorter way," said my uncle.
"We mentioned that to him, and he answered that better time could be
made on the south-side trail," said Josh.
"And there you be! Don't worry!" cried Lem. "Now, Wesley, is it sartin
sure that you plunked that there Slidin' Beaver?"
"His body is somewhere down there in the river!" I replied.
"You bet! Wesley finished him!" Abbott exclaimed.
"Glory be! Look how near that there cut-throat got me!" cried Lem, and
pointed to a bullet crease in the side of his neck.
"Hurry! Tell me the news they brought!" Pitamakan demanded of me as we
all turned toward the barricade. He fairly danced round me when he
learned that his own father had taken word of our need to the Pikuni and
that the warriors would come to us as soon as possible by the south-side
trail.
Presently Tsistsaki called us to supper. During the meal we told the
Twins all that had happened to us since we landed there at the mouth of
the Musselshell. Then, having learned the details of our day-and-night
watch, they declared that they wanted to stand watch in the grove that
night and laughed when we said that we thought three men were needed to
guard it.
We three were only too glad to let them have their way. However, we
relieved the engagés from watch duty in the barricade, dividing the
night between us, and they were therefore in good shape the next morning
for a day of real work. Beginning that day, they were all ordered to cut
and haul logs while the rest of us performed what guard duty had been
their share. In consequence the heaps of logs round the site of the fort
grew rapidly, and we began to look forward to the day when we should
begin work upon the walls. My uncle said that at least one side of the
fort must soon be put up, in which to store the trade goods that would
surely be landed for us within six weeks.
A day came soon, but not too soon for Pitamakan and me, when the camp
required more meat. I asked to be allowed to ride Is-spai-u, but my
uncle shook his head.
As we were saddling our horses, the men started for the grove and Henri
Robarre called out to us: "Eet is halways ze buf' dat you keel! Why not
sometames ze helk, ze deer, ze hantelopes?"
"Kyai-yo!" Tsistsaki exclaimed. "He knows that real meat is the best; it
is only that he must be continually making objections that he talks that
way. Pay no attention to him; kill real meat for us as usual."
"Oh, kill elk or deer along with the buffalo! Kill some badgers if they
want them! Anything for peace in camp!" my uncle exclaimed.
It was easy enough to get the buffalo; they were always in the valley
within sight of camp. That morning we found a herd within a mile of it,
killed five fat animals and had the meat all loaded upon the following
wagon by nine o'clock. The teamster then headed for camp, and we went on
to kill what our horses could pack of some other kind of meat.
Now, we did not want to ride into the brush-filled groves along the
river in quest of elk and deer, for as likely as not we should be
ambushed by some wandering war party. We therefore turned back through
the grove in which the men were at work and thence went on down the big
game trail running from the mouth of the Musselshell down the Missouri
Valley. Where it entered the first of the narrow bottoms we turned off.
We had gone no more than a couple of hundred yards when four bull elk
rose out of a patch of junipers on the hill to our right and
inquisitively stared at us. I slipped from my horse, took careful aim,
and shot one of them.
We tethered our horses close to my kill and were butchering it when we
were startled by a loud but distant hail and sprang for our rifles,
which were leaning against some brush several steps away. We looked down
into the bottom under us and there, just outside the narrow grove that
fringed the river, we saw five Indians standing all in a row.
"Ha! Another war party, and no doubt another invitation to a smoke that
would be the end of us!" Pitamakan exclaimed indignantly.