BAPTISTE LAJEUNESSE.
The slow return of the village to the Marias River, and their journey
along it to the camp, was uneventful. Hugh had let it be known among his
friends, that on reaching this camp he and Jack would leave them, and
the evening before this took place, a great feast was given by the head
chief, Iron Shirt, to which a considerable number of the principal men
of the village were asked. Out of compliment to Jack, Joe and Handsome
Face were invited, and it was between them that he sat on the right of
the chief on this great occasion. The speeches made were many, and in
each one of them were friendly allusions to the two white men, who for
some months past had dwelt in the camp. During the smoking of the last
pipe, Hugh stood on his feet and made a speech in Piegan, in which he
acknowledged all the kindness that they had received. Then, as they had
previously arranged, the three boys got up and went about the circle,
putting down before each one of the guests a package containing some
present, which should be a slight memorial of their visit.
The making up of these bundles had occupied Joe and Jack for two
evenings, and they contained about all the trade goods that they had
brought from the South, so that when the bundles had been prepared, all
the red cloth, the beads, the tobacco and the handkerchiefs were gone,
and of all the property that they had brought into the camp, there
remained only a little food.
The next morning, long before they were up, presents from different
people in the camp began to arrive at the lodge. There were great piles
of buffalo robes, beautiful moccasins, shirts ornamented with beads or
porcupine quills; skins and furs of one sort and another. More, as Hugh
said, than they could pack on their horses. However, they made up their
bundles and by borrowing a couple of pack horses from John Monroe,
managed to load all their possessions, and set out for Benton. The flour
sack, which contained the gold, was wrapped in a bear skin and placed on
the bucking dun, under a great pile of robes.
Jack had arrayed himself in a suit of new clothing throughout. A
beautiful shirt of antelope skin, heavily fringed and ornamented with
quills, buckskin trousers, bead worked, and a pair of handsomely
ornamented buckskin moccasins, with parfleche soles. About his hat was a
strip of otter fur. His knife sheath was a large one of Indian make,
studded with bright brass headed nails, and from a buttonhole of his
shirt hung the gold powder charger by a buckskin string.
They started late, and it was night when they reached Fort Benton.
However, Hugh managed to find his friend who owned the stable, and they
put their possessions in it, their horses into the corral, and slept on
the fragrant hay. At daylight next morning they were up, and after a
time had breakfast. Hugh inquired when the bank would be open, and
learned that this would not be for three or four hours yet. He told the
boys, therefore, to go out and wander about the town if they wanted to,
and said that he would stay with their property in the stable, until the
time came to go to the bank with the gold.
Joe's childhood having been spent in Benton, he was a good guide for the
town; yet concerning the old fort and the interior of the trading posts,
he knew little or nothing. For some time they wandered through the
streets and down along the river bank, and at length turned about to
return to the stable. As they were passing along the street, Jack
stopped before the window of a saloon to look at a mountain sheep's head
with immense horns, and after he had looked at it for a while, and
spoken with Joe of its great size, he turned to walk away, and as he did
so, found himself standing face to face with a very tall man, whose long
white beard reached nearly to his waist. The stranger was not only very
tall, but very broad as well; but seemed thin, almost to emaciation, yet
gave one the idea of a person possessing great strength. He was neatly
dressed in buckskin, which, though not new, was clean and in good
condition, and was without any ornament of beads or quill work. As Jack
stepped aside to avoid the old man, he spoke to him in a low, pleasant
voice, and said: "The head is large, my friend, is it not?"
"Yes, sir," said Jack, "it's immense. I never saw anything so big, but
then I haven't killed many sheep, in fact, I have only seen a very few."
"You are young," said the stranger. "You have not lived long enough to
see many things. Do you belong in this country?"
"No," said Jack, "I come from back in the States. I am just out here for
a little while, and have been living this summer with the Indians up
north."
"You are along way from home. How do you come to be here?" said the man.
"Young boys do not usually travel that great distance alone."
"Oh," said Jack, "I came with a friend, Mr. Hugh Johnson, maybe you've
heard of him. He's been a long time in the country, more than forty
years." The man seemed to ponder.
"Many years ago I knew a man so called; those were in the trapping days.
We used to call him then, Casse-tête, because, once with a stone, he
smashed the head of a wounded cow that was charging him. He had a strong
arm and good luck." Jack was interested, and wondered if it were Hugh
who had done this. He would have liked to ask more questions, but by the
clock in the saloon, he saw that it was time to meet Hugh, and he
thought, perhaps, that he could find this old man again, later, and talk
to him, so he took off his hat politely and said good morning, and
started to go on. But as he moved, the old man touched him on the
shoulder and said: "Wait, friend; you have there," pointing to Jack's
breast, "property that I lost long ago. Where did you get it? If you
look at it, you will find scratched in the metal, my initials, 'B. L.'"
For a moment, Jack was almost dumb with astonishment, and then he said:
"Are you Baptiste Lajeunesse?"
"That is my name," said the old man, "where have you heard it?"
"Oh, Mr. Lajeunesse, wait until we find Hugh, then we must have a long
talk with you. Were you chased by Indians once, long ago south of the
Bear Paw Mountains? And did you lose a mule there?"
The old man smiled rather sadly, and said: "Truly, my son, I was chased
there, and I did lose a mule and many other valuable things which I have
never been able to find. But one of them I see now on your breast."
Jack quickly untied the powder charger and offered it to Baptiste who
waved it away. Then Jack asked him: "Where can we find you in an hour or
two? We will come back here with Hugh, I'm almost sure that he is the
man that you call Casse-tête."
"I'll be near here all the day," said Baptiste, "and if I'm not in
sight, the man in the saloon can tell you where I have gone." Without a
word more, Jack and Joe started on a run toward the stable.
When they reached the stable, there was no one there, but a man
loitering in the street near by, told them that he had seen "their
partner" going up the street a little while before, with a sack of flour
on his shoulder. At once, Joe led the way to the bank nearby, and
entering it, they could see, behind the counter, Hugh and another man,
in earnest conversation. As soon as Hugh saw them he introduced them to
Mr. Finley, the manager of the bank, as his two partners. Hugh had
already taken out the gold. It had been examined and weighed, and three
drafts, each for $2,520.00 were now being made out, one to the order of
each of the three.
Hugh told Jack that a few miles below the town, there was a steam-boat
loading, on which they could get passage for Bismarck, and that he had
made arrangements to have all their baggage hauled down to it.
"I reckon, we'll leave all the horses, except maybe Pawnee and your new
horse, up here in charge of Joe. We can trust him to look after them
carefully, and I reckon it's more than likely, that you may come back
here again next season; and if you do, it will be a lot shorter for you
to come direct and find your horses here, rather than to go to the ranch
and have to ride up across country. That takes a lot of time.
"Of course, if you want to, you can leave all the horses here, we won't
need them going down. And now, I reckon," he added, "we'll go out and
buy some things. We'll stop in again to shake hands with you, Mr.
Finley, before we quit the town."
They were scarcely outside the door, when Jack, who in his excitement,
had hardly been able to keep quiet, exclaimed, "Oh! Hugh, we've found
Baptiste Lajeunesse."
"Sho," said Hugh, "you don't mean it."
"Yes we have. He saw the powder charger and before looking at it, said
it was his and that he had lost it a long time, and that it had his
initials on it. He had not told us what his name was, and I asked if he
was Baptiste Lajeunesse, and he said yes. Let's go and see him and find
out all about what happened when he lost the powder charger; and oh!
Hugh," he said, his face falling, "suppose that gold belongs to him."
"Well, son," said Hugh, "if it's Bat, and he lost the powder charger and
he lost the gold too, we are all just as poor as we were before you
found it."
"Oh!" said Jack, "won't that be a shame, when we have been thinking that
we were all so rich, and when Joe needs so many things, and you and me
too, Hugh."
"Well," said Hugh, with a comical look of disappointment on his face, "I
guess we all think we need lots of things that we haven't got, but
somehow or other, if we can't have 'em, we manage to just live along in
about the same way, and I don't know as it makes much difference, but I
would like to see Joe with a good gun and I reckon we'll have to try to
get him one somehow, whether we have the gold or not."