BIG LAKE CALLS A COUNCIL
It was quite dark when Pitamakan and I drove the horses out from the
barricade for their night-grazing. We flicked them into a lope up the
rise to the plain, but when we were nearly to the top they suddenly
shied at something ahead and dashed sharply off to the left. I was
riding Is-spai-u as usual, and he was so frightened that it was all I
could do to keep him from running ahead of the loose stock. Pitamakan
and I went some distance before we managed to head the horses up the
slope; and as soon as we were well out on the plain I asked Pitamakan
what he thought had frightened our animals.
"I will tell you my real belief," he answered. "It was the enemy, maybe
a number of them, lying there to see in what direction we would drive
the horses, so that they could trail on and take them from us."
"It may have been a bear."
"If a bear had been there, we should have seen him; there is starlight
enough for that. The low, sweet sage growth along the slope could not
have hidden a bear from us, but it is high enough to conceal men lying
flat in it. Almost-brother, I believe with old Lame Wolf that trouble is
about to break upon us!"
"Well, they shall not get these horses," I declared.
When, at last, we hobbled the loose animals and picketed Is-spai-u and
Pitamakan's runner we felt sure that no enemy could find us. But there
was to be no sleep for us that night; we settled down to listen for the
far-off boom of the cannon, which would tell us that the cut-throats had
attacked our camp.
About midnight we nearly started for the west and southwest and the
Pikuni, but we decided to wait a little longer and listen for the boom
of the cannon. We watched the Seven Persons swinging round in the
northern sky, and at last they warned us that day was not far off. The
attack upon camp had not opened; so we decided to urge my uncle to allow
us to go at once in search of the Pikuni. We unhobbled the loose stock
and drove them in with a rush. There was only a faint lightening of the
eastern horizon when we arrived at the barricade, and Abbott, standing
on watch at the passageway, let down the bars for us.
"You are in plenty early this mornin'," he said as we drove past him.
"We have reason for it. We want to persuade my uncle to let us start
right now after the Pikuni," I answered.
"You said it! That is just what he should have you do!" he exclaimed.
As we got down from our horses we saw dimly here and there the other
watchers approaching to learn whether we had anything to tell of the
night. Then in the direction of the grove we all heard the patter of
feet striking harshly upon the stony ground.
"It's the Twins!" Abbott exclaimed.
"Behind them the cut-throats!" said Pitamakan, and at the same time our
ears caught the faint thudding of many moccasined feet.
Then the Twins loomed up hugely in the dusk. They dashed in through the
passageway, and Josh gasped out, "They're right at our tails! Run that
cannon out!"
The cannon was in the center of the barricade, loaded with trade balls,
fused, and covered with a piece of canvas to protect it from the
weather. As Abbott, the Twins, and I ran to it, Pitamakan hurried on to
our lodge to rouse my uncle; and the engagés, who had been on watch with
the Mandans, quietly slipped round awakening the inmates of the other
lodges. I flipped the cover on the cannon, and, just as we got it into
the passageway, the fight opened with shots and yells on the west side
of the barricade. The thought flashed into my mind that Pitamakan had
been right. It had been some of the enemy, lying concealed upon the
slope, that our horses had shied from when we were driving them out to
graze.
"Never mind the racket back there; our job is right here! Now! Swing her
round!" Abbott shouted to us, and he had to shout in order to make
himself heard.
We swung the gun round. I kept hold on the tailpiece while Abbott
sighted and called, "To the right a little! Left a trifle! There!"
As he lighted the fuse I sprang out of the way of the recoil and for the
first time looked ahead. Out of the dusk of the morning, less than a
hundred yards away, a horde of warriors were coming toward us swiftly
yet with cautious, catlike steps. There was something terribly sinister
in their approach, far more so than if they had come with the usual war
songs and shouts of an Indian attack. _Boom!_ went the cannon. The flash
of it blinded us; the smoke drifted into our faces. Lem, who was
carrying our rifles in his arms, shouted to us to take them.
"No! Lay 'em down! Help load! Where's the powder for this gun?" Abbott
yelled.
"Right here!" cried my uncle as he and Tsistsaki and a couple of other
women joined us. "Use your rifles!"
We snatched them from Lem, and, lo! as the smoke drifted away we could
see no one to shoot at, nor could we hear anything but the hollow murmur
of the river, as if it were mocking us.
"By gum! They've just flew away!" Lem exclaimed.
"Not they!" said my uncle, proceeding to thrust a charge powder into the
cannon and ram it home. "Just step over to the river-bank and look down,
and you'll see them."
"Ha! So that's their scheme, is it? Goin' to shut us off from water! I
might have knowed it! What beats me is, why didn't they come on? If they
had, 't would have been all over with us in about two minutes!" said
Lem.
"What say they?" Pitamakan asked me, and I told him.
The Mandans and the engagés now came to us from the other side of the
stockade, with the women and children trailing after them.
"The cut-throats ran down over the river-bank," old Lame Wolf signed to
my uncle.
"Sare, M'sieu' Reynard," Henri Robarre said to him, "hon our side ze
cut-throats were but few. Zey holler much, zey fire deir guns no at us.
Zey shoot hup at ze stars, an' zen run hide behin' ze bank of ze riv'
M'sieu', what hit means, dat strange conducts?"
"I don't understand it myself, except that when the Twins discovered
them their plan of attack went all wrong," my uncle answered in a
puzzled voice.
"I know all about it," Pitamakan said in the sign language so that the
Mandans should understand.
"Well, let us hear," said my uncle.
"This is it," he went on. "The cut-throats want our scalps, but they
want also Is-spai-u. A few of them laid in wait for my almost-brother
and me, hoping to seize the runner when we drove the herd out last
night; but they failed. The chiefs then planned to wait until we should
bring the horses back into the barricade and kill us in a surprise
attack as we all stood fighting their few men on the west side. Thus
they would take no chances of shooting the black runner. They would have
wiped us out, had not the Twins discovered them down there in the
timber. Now they plan to make us go mad from want of water and then wipe
us out."
"You women, how much water have you?" Tsistsaki asked.
One by one they answered; there was not a bucketful in any lodge!
"Far Thunder, it is now time for my almost-brother and me to go after
our people," Pitamakan said to my uncle impressively.
"It is! Go--as fast as you can!" he replied.
"I ride Is-spai-u," I said.
"You do not! He is our shield, it seems. You ride your own runner!"
We had saddled up and were ready to start within five minutes. Day had
come. To the west and east there was not a single body of the enemy.
Abbott could hardly believe his eyes.
Tsistsaki, ever thoughtful of us, had tied little sacks of food to our
saddles, and now we mounted our runners. Nowhere along the bank of the
river was there the least sign of the enemy, but we were certain that
many a pair of eyes was watching the barricade from clumps of rye grass
and sweet sage.
"You'll better lie low on yer horses an' go out flyin'; they'll prob'ly
shoot at you," Abbott warned us.
My uncle came and grasped my hand. "It is a terrible risk you are
taking. I wish I could take it for you, but my place seems to be here.
I've got you all in a bad fix, my boy, but I hope you and Pitamakan will
pull us out of it." His voice was unsteady.
"We'll do our best," I answered.
"Go, I am praying for you both!" Tsistsaki called out to us.
We took a running start, hanging low upon the right side of our animals,
and went out through the passageway with a rush. We turned sharply to
the right, and in no time had the barricade between us and the river.
Not a shot was fired at us. We rode straight up the valley for fully a
mile before we turned out on the plain. There we halted for a last look
at camp. How peaceful it seemed! But how terrible was the situation!
There were at least two hundred enemies between our few people and
water.
As we rode on we kept looking for the trail of dust raised by thousands
of dragging, sharp-pointed lodge poles and travois and horses' hoofs,
that would mark the advance of the Pikuni. We were not long in reaching
Crooked Creek, and there at the rim of the valley we parted, Pitamakan
to go due west toward the buttes of It-Crushed-Them Creek, I to follow
up the stream. At the head of it, close to the foot of the mountains, he
said, I should find the deep, well-worn trail of the Pikuni, which ran
straight east past the foot of Black Butte to the Musselshell. If I
should fail to meet the Pikuni along Crooked Creek I was to go west
along the trail until I found them or the place where they had turned
northeast in the direction of the buttes toward which he was heading.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when I struck the big
east-and-west trail at the head of the creek, not more than a mile from
the foot of the Moccasin Mountains. My horse went on more easily in one
of the broad, smooth tracks, and I was more expectant. The Pikuni could
not be far from me now, I thought.
Toward sundown I topped a long, wide, sloping ridge and looked back
along the way I had come--more than forty miles. My horse was showing
the strain of the long, hot ride. My throat was burning hot from want of
water; my lips were cracking.
A mile or two ahead were low, pine-capped hills, and between two of them
I saw a patch of the bright green foliage of cottonwoods, a sure sign of
water. It was growing dusk when I arrived at the place. I slid from my
horse and held his rope as he stepped into the narrow stream. He all but
fought me when I pulled him away from it and picketed him near by. Then
I drank and had a hard fight with myself to stop long before I had had
enough.
From the description of the country that Pitamakan had given me I knew
that I was at the head of the east fork of It-Crushed-Them Creek. I did
not know how far it was to the other fork, but, near or far, it was
impossible for me to go on until my horse had had a good rest, with
plenty of grass and water. In the gathering night I found a good
grazing-place a little way below the crossing, picketed him upon it and
sat down beside the small clump of buck-brush round which I had fastened
the end of his rope. An hour or so later I took him again to water and
that time I drank all that I wanted. Then back at the grazing-place I
ate the meat and hard bread that Tsistsaki had tied to my saddle while
my runner greedily cropped the short, rich grass. Long and hard though
my ride had been, I was too worried to sleep. As plain as if it were
right in front of me, I could see our little camp at the mouth of the
Musselshell and its weary watchers staring out at the river-bank,
expecting every moment that the enemy would swarm up and attack them.
I fell asleep, and my dream was worse than my waking vision. I saw our
camp within the barricade a wreck, with smouldering heaps of lodges, and
scalped bodies strewn among them. The dream was so real, so terrible
that the force of it woke me and I came to myself standing and tensely
gripping my rifle.
I looked up to the north and was astonished. The Seven Persons had
nearly completed their nightly course; morning was at hand. How could I
have slept so long? I sprang up and saddled my horse, watered him, and,
mounting in the light of the half-moon, again took up the trail to the
west.
When I had gone two or three miles from my camping-place my horse raised
his head and neighed loudly. I angrily checked his attempt to neigh
again and probably betray my presence to some enemy near by. When he
pulled on his bit and pranced sidewise, eager to go on, I fought his
attempts and looked up and down the rise in front of me as far as I
could see in the moonlight. I listened and heard the far-off but
unmistakable howling of dogs. How my heart rose at the sound of it!
Ahead was the camp of the Pikuni, I was sure. Crows or other enemies
would not dare bring their women and children so far into Blackfoot
country. I let my eager horse go. We fairly flew up over the next rise
and then over another, and there at the foot of it, in the light of
breaking day, scattered up and down a willow-fringed streamlet, were the
lodges of my people and their herds of horses blackening the valley.
Smoke was rising from several of the lodges as I rushed into the camp,
sprang from my horse in front of White Wolf's lodge, and dived into it.
"Hurry! Hurry! Call the warriors! The cut-throats are at our camp! Oh,
why were you so slow in coming?" I all but shouted.
"Now, calm yourself! Excited ones can't talk straight--" White Wolf
began.
But his head wife interrupted him by springing to my side, grabbing my
arm, and fiercely crying, "My son--Pitamakan! What of him?"
"Somewhere near here, looking for you," I answered; and with a queer,
choking croon of relief she sank back upon her couch.
"If we are too late, it is Far Thunder's fault," White Wolf said to me
sternly. "His message was that the cut-throats were encamped upon their
own river in the north. Why should we hurry, then, when they were more
than twice as far from you as we were? Well, tell us how it is!"
I explained our situation in a few words, but, few as they were, they
set White Wolf afire. "There is no time to lose! Come! Quick to Big
Lake's lodge!"
We ran and burst in upon the head chief, who was still lying under his
robes. I had not half finished telling why I had come when he had one of
his women running for the camp-crier. Five minutes later the crier and
several volunteers were hurrying up and down the long camp calling out
the warriors and ordering the clan chiefs and the chiefs of the bands of
the All Friends Society to hurry to a council in Big Lake's lodge.
They came, running and eager, and in a very short time it was decided
what bands of the society should hurry on to fight the cut-throats and
what ones should guard the following camp. About six hundred men were
ordered to be ready to start as soon as possible, each one with his two
best horses.
The boys and the old men were running in the herds as White Wolf and I
returned to his lodge. I told one of the women to catch for me two
certain horses in our band and fell upon the food that was set before
me. Then, just as we began eating, we heard a great outcry near by, and
Pitamakan came in and sat beside his father, who fondly patted him on
the shoulder. His horse had played out at the It-Crushed-Them Creek
buttes, and he had remained there all night.
Now the warriors were beginning to gather out in front of the center of
the camp, each band round its chief. We soon joined them with our fresh
mounts. Raising the war song, and followed by the cries of the women
calling upon us to be of good courage and win, we set out upon our ride
to the Musselshell.