THE FIGHT AT THE FORD
Jackson, wounded and weary as he was, drove his crippled horse so hard
all the night through that by dawn he had covered almost fifty miles,
and was in sight of the long line of wagons, crawling like a serpent
down the slopes west of the South Pass, a cloud of bitter alkali dust
hanging like a blanket over them. No part of the way had been more
cheerless than this gray, bare expanse of more than a hundred miles, and
none offered less invitation for a bivouac. But now both man and horse
were well-nigh spent.
Knowing that he would be reached within an hour or so at best, Jackson
used the last energies of his horse in riding back and forth at right
angles across the trail, the Plains sign of "Come to me!" He hoped it
would be seen. He flung himself down across the road, in the dust, his
bridle tied to his wrist. His horse, now nearly gone, lay down beside
him, nor ever rose again. And here, in the time a gallop could bring
them up, Banion and three of his men found them, one dead, the other
little better.
"Bill! Bill!"
The voice of Banion was anxious as he lightly shook the shoulder of the
prone man, half afraid that he, too, had died. Stupid in sleep, the
scout sprang up, rifle in hand.
"Who's thar?"
"Hold, Bill! Friends! Easy now!"
The old man pulled together, rubbed his eyes.
"I must of went to sleep agin," said he. "My horse--pshaw now, pore
critter, do-ee look now!"
In rapid words he now told his errand. They could see the train
accelerating its speed. Jackson felt in the bag at his belt and handed
Banion the folded paper. He opened the folds steadily, read the words
again and again.
"'Come to us,'" is what it says. He spoke to Jackson.
"Ye're a damned liar, Will," remarked Jackson.
"I'll read it all!" said Banion suddenly.
"'Will Banion, come to me, or it may be too late. There never was any
wedding. I am the most wicked and most unhappy woman in the world. You
owe me nothing! But come! M.W.'
"That's what it says. Now you know. Tell me--you heard of no wedding
back at Independence Rock? They said nothing? He and she--"
"Ef they was ever any weddin' hit was a damned pore sort, an' she says
thar wasn't none. She'd orto know."
"Can you ride, Jackson?"
"Span in six fast mules for a supply wagon, such as kin gallop. I'll
sleep in that a hour or so. Git yore men started, Will. We may be too
late. It's nigh fifty mile to the ford o' the Green."
It came near to mutiny when Banion ordered a third of his men to stay
back with the ox teams and the families. Fifty were mounted and ready in
five minutes. They were followed by two fast wagons. In one of these
rolled Bill Jackson, unconscious of the roughness of the way.
On the Sandy, twenty miles from the ford, they wakened him.
"Now tell me how it lies," said Banion. "How's the country?"
Jackson drew a sketch on the sand.
"They'll surround, an' they'll cut off the water."
"Can we ford above and come in behind them?"
"We mout. Send half straight to the ford an' half come in behind,
through the willers, huh? That'd put 'em atween three fires. Ef we driv'
'em on the wagons they'd get hell thar, an' ef they broke, the wagons
could chase 'em inter us again. I allow we'd give 'em hell. Hit's the
Crows I'm most a-skeered of. The Bannacks--ef that's who they was--'ll
run easy."
At sunset of that day the emigrants, now half mad of thirst, and half
ready to despair of succor or success, heard the Indian drums sound and
the shrilling of the eagle-bone whistles. The Crows were chanting again.
Whoops arose along the river bank.
"My God! they're coming!" called out a voice.
There was a stir of uneasiness along the line, an ominous thing. And
then the savage hosts broke from their cover, more than a thousand men,
ready to take some loss in their hope that the whites were now more
helpless. In other circumstances it must have been a stirring spectacle
for any who had seen it. To these, cowering in the sand, it brought
terror.
But before the three ranks of the Crows had cleared the cover the last
line began to yell, to whip, to break away. Scattering but continuous
rifle fire followed them, war cries arose, not from savages, but white
men. A line of riders emerged, coming straight through to the second
rank of the Crow advance. Then the beleaguered knew that the Missourians
were up.
"Banion, by God!" said a voice which few stopped to recognize as
Woodhull's.
He held his fire, his rifle resting so long through the wagon wheel that
Caleb Price in one swift motion caught it away from him.
"No harm, friend," said he, "but you'll not need this just now!"
His cold eye looked straight into that of the intending murderer.
The men in the wagon park rose to their work again. The hidden Bannacks
began to break away from their lodgment under the river bank. The sound
of hoofs and of shouts came down the trail. The other wing of the
Missourians flung off and cleared the ford before they undertook to
cross, their slow, irregular, deadly rifle fire doing its work among
the hidden Bannacks until they broke and ran for their horses in the
cottonwoods below. This brought them partly into view, and the rifles of
the emigrants on that side bore on them till they broke in sheer terror
and fled in a scattered _sauve qui peut_.
The Crows swerved under the enfilading fire of the men who now crossed
the ford. Caught between three fires, and meeting for their first time
the use of the revolver, then new to them, they lost heart and once more
left their dead, breaking away into a mad flight west and north which
did not end till they had forded the upper tributaries of the Green and
Snake, and found their way back west of the Tetons to their own country
far east and north of the Two-go-tee crossing of the Wind River
Mountains; whence for many a year they did not emerge again to battle
with the white nation on the Medicine Road. At one time there were forty
Crow squaws, young and old, with gashed breasts and self-amputated
fingers, given in mourning over the unreturning brave.
What many men had not been able to do of their own resources, less than
a fourth their number now had done. Side by side Banion, Jackson, a half
dozen others, rode up to the wagon gap, now opened. They were met by a
surge of the rescued. Women, girls threw themselves upon them, kissing
them, embracing them hysterically. Where had been gloom, now was
rejoicing, laughter, tears.
The leaders of the emigrants came up to Banion and his men, Wingate in
advance. Banion still sat his great black horse, coldly regarding them.
"I have kept my promise, Captain Wingate," said he. "I have not come
until you sent for me. Let me ask once more, do I owe you anything now?"
"No, sir, you do not," replied the older man.
"And do you owe me anything?"
Wingate did not answer.
"Name what you like, Major Banion," said a voice at his shoulder--Caleb
Price.
Banion turned to him slowly.
"Some things have no price, sir," said he. "For other things I shall ask
a high price in time. Captain Wingate, your daughter asked me to come.
If I may see her a moment, and carry back to my men the hope of her
recovery, we shall all feel well repaid."
Wingate made way with the others. Banion rode straight through the gap,
with no more than one unseeing glance at Woodhull, near whom sat
Jackson, a pistol resting on his thigh. He came to the place under a
wagon where they had made a hospital cot for Molly Wingate. It was her
own father and mother who lifted her out as Will Banion sprang down, hat
in hand, pale in his own terror at seeing her so pale.
"No, don't go!" said the girl to her parents. "Be here with us--and
God.'"
She held out her arms and he bent above her, kissing her forehead gently
and shyly as a boy.
"Please get well, Molly Wingate," said he. "You are Molly Wingate?"
"Yes. At the end--I couldn't! I ran away, all in my wedding clothes,
Will. In the dark. Someone shot me. I've been sick, awfully sick, Will."
"Please get well, Molly Wingate! I'm going away again. This time, I
don't know where. Can't you forget me, Molly Wingate?"
"I'm going to try, Will. I did try. Go on ahead, Will," she added. "You
know what I mean. Do what I told you. I--why, Will!"
"My poor lamb!" said the strong voice of her mother, who gathered her in
her arms, looking over her shoulder at this man to whom her child had
made no vows. But Banion, wet eyed, was gone once more.
Jackson saw his leader out of the wagon gap, headed for a camping spot
far apart. He stumbled up to the cot where Molly lay, her silent parents
still close by.
"Here, Miss Molly, gal," said he, holding out some object in his hand.
"We both got a arrer through the shoulder, an' mine's a'most well
a'ready. Ain't nothin' in the world like a good chaw o' tobackers to put
on a arrer cut. Do-ee, now!"