The War-Trail Fort

Further Adventures of Thomas Fox and Pitamakan

BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE VARIAN

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WE SAW HIM STOOP OVER THE FALLEN MAN, THEN RISE WITH A BOW AND A SHIELD THAT HE WAVED ALOFT

Contents

Illustrations

The War-Trail Fort

CHAPTER I

A COMPANY DISSOLVES AND A NEW VENTURE STARTS

One of the most vivid impressions of my youth is of a certain evening in the spring of 1865. It was the evening of May 21. Just before sundown the first steamboat of the season, the Yellowstone II, arrived from St. Louis and brought the astounding news that the American Fur Company was going out of business and was selling its various trading-posts, forts and stocks of goods, good-will and all, to private individuals.

To most of us in Fort Benton, factor, clerks, artisans, voyageurs, trappers and hunters, it was as if the world were coming to an end. The company—by which we meant the Chouteaus, father and sons—was the beginning and the end of our existence. We revered the very name of it; we were faithful to it and ready to die for it if need be. Now we were left to shift for ourselves. What were we to do?

Boylike, I had gone aboard the boat as soon as it landed and had passed an hour in wandering about it from end to end and from hold to pilot-house. Up in the pilot-house I found Joe La Barge, the most famous and trusted of the Missouri River pilots.

"Well, Master Thomas Fox," he said to me, "it is bad news that we have brought you, isn't it? What is your Uncle Wesley going to do, I wonder, now that the company is selling out?"

"The company is selling out? What do you mean?" I faltered.

He told me, and I turned from him instantly and ran ashore. I sprang through the stockade gate of the fort and paused, struck by something unfamiliar there in the great court: it was the strange silence. The voyageurs, the trappers and hunters, most voluble of men, were sitting in the doorways of their quarters and saying never a word; the terrible news had tongue-tied them. I had been hurrying to my uncle's quarters to ask the truth of what the pilot had told me; but the dejected attitude of the employees was proof enough that the news was true.

A tall, lean voyageur rushed by me to the center of the court and raised his outstretched hands to the sky. "My frien's," he cried, "dis ees mos' unjust! Dis ees one terrible calamitee! I call le bon Dieu to weetness dat eet is but two summer ago, een St. Louis, dat Pierre Chouteau, he say to me, 'Louis, you are ze bon cordelier! You are serve us mos' faithful dese many year! W'en de time come dat you can no longer pull eet de cordelle, de company, he shall give you a pension; een your hold hage you shall be mos' comfortable!'

"An' now, my frien's, ze great company, he ees dead! Ze pension pour le pauvre Louis, eet is not!" he went on in an increasingly frenzied shriek. "My frien's, I am hask you, w'at am I to do? I am fear ze Pieds Noirs; ze Gros Ventres; ze Assiniboins! I no can trap ze beav'! I no can hunt ze buf'! Eet ees zat I mus' die!"

He turned and with wild gestures fled from the court. His listeners slumped even more dejectedly into their lowly seats. I went on to my uncle's quarters and found two of the clerks, George Steell and Matthew Carroll, sitting with my uncle, and his wife, Tsistsaki,—true mother to me,—at his shoulder. I sat down upon my cot in a corner of the room and listened to their conversation and gathered that the Chouteaus had written to the three men, offering to sell them the fort and its contents upon most reasonable terms, and that my uncle had declined to enter into partnership with the two in purchasing the place and carrying on the business. At that, like poor Louis, the voyageur, I, too, was dismayed. "What, then, are we to do?" I asked myself.

The two visitors expressed great regret at my uncle's decision, said that they feared he would soon find that he had made a mistake, and went out. As soon as the door closed behind them, my uncle sprang from his seat, whirled Tsistsaki round three or four times, made a pass at me, and cried, "Well, my woman, well, Thomas, this is my great day! I am no longer under obligations to the company—there is no more company. I am free! Free to be what I have long wanted to be, an independent, lone Indian trader!"

Tsistsaki thoroughly understood English but never spoke it for fear that she would make a mistake and be laughed at. In her own language she cried, "Oh, my man! Do you mean that? Are we to leave this place and with my people follow the buffalo?"

"Something like that," he told her.

"O good! Good!" I all but shouted. "That means that I shall have no end of good times riding about and hunting with Pitamakan!"

He, you know, was my true-and-tried chum. Young though we were, we had experienced some wild adventures. We two had passed a winter in the depths of the Rockies; we had been to the shore of the Western Sea and back; and we had seen the great deserts and the strange peoples of the always-summer land. It was in my mind, now, that this sudden turn in the affairs of my uncle was to be the cause of more adventures for us. I could fairly scent them.

As to Tsistsaki, she went almost crazy with joy. "The gods are good to us!" she cried. "They have answered my prayers! Oh, how I have begged them, my man, to turn your steps to the wide plains and the mountains of our great hunting-ground! It is not good for us, you know, to live shut within these walls winter after winter and summer after summer, seeing no farther than the slopes and the cutbanks of this river bottom. To be well and happy we must do some roaming now and then and live as Old Man, our Maker, intended us to live, in airy buffalo-leather lodges, and close upon the breast of our mother [the earth]. Tell me, now, where we are going and when, so that I may have all our things packed."

"I cannot tell you that until I have talked with the chiefs. I am going now to counsel with them, for the steamboat starts back for St. Louis very early in the morning, and upon the decision of the chiefs depends the size of the trade-goods orders that I shall send down with the captain."

"We shall go over to camp with you!" Tsistsaki declared.

My uncle told me to order the stableman, Bissette, to saddle three horses for us. Within fifteen minutes we were heading for the valley of the Teton, five miles to the north, where more than ten thousand Indians were waiting to trade their winter take of robes and furs for the goods that the steamboats were to bring to us. All the North Blackfeet and the Bloods and the Gros Ventres were there, and our own people, the Pikuni, the southern, or Montana, branch, of the great Blackfoot Confederacy. We called the Pikuni "our people," because nearly all of our company men in Fort Benton were married to women of that tribe.

What a thunder of sound struck our ears as we arrived at the edge of the valley slope and looked down into it! It was all aglow with fires shining yellow through the buffalo-leather lodge skins. Drums were booming; people were singing, laughing, and dancing; children were shouting; horses were impatiently whinnying for their mates; and dogs were howling defiance to their wild kin of the plains, the deep-voiced wolves and shrill-yelping coyotes. We paused but a moment, listening to it all, and hurried on down to the camp of the Pikuni and the lodge of White Wolf, chief of the Small Robes Clan, brother of Tsistsaki and father of my chum, Pitamakan—Running Eagle.

Tethering our horses to some brush, we went inside and were made welcome, my uncle taking the honor seat at the right of the chief. In as few words as possible my uncle explained why we had come and the need for hurry, and White Wolf at once sent messengers up and down the valley to ask the different tribal head chiefs to come to his lodge for a council with Pi-oh' Sis-tsi-kum—Far Thunder—as my uncle had been most honorably renamed at the medicine-lodge ceremonials of the previous summer. Within an hour they had all arrived, Big Lake of the Pikuni, Crow Foot of the North Blackfeet, Calf Shirt of the Bloods, and Lone Bull of the Gros Ventres, and with them came some of their under-chiefs—clan chiefs and chiefs of the various branches of the All Friends Society. The lodge became so crowded with them that the women and children were obliged to retire to other lodges.

"Well, Far Thunder," Big Lake said to my uncle, when all were seated and the pipe was going the round of the circle, "we were all busy directing our women in the packing of our robes and furs for to-morrow's trade, for we had been told of the arrival of the fire boat; but when you called we came. Speak; our ears await your words!"

My uncle had a wonderful command of the Blackfoot language. Briefly in well-chosen words he told them that the great company was winding up its affairs. He explained that Steell and Carroll would take over the company fort and the business, and then said that he himself had decided to enter into close trade relations with them, especially to keep them supplied with goods and ammunition during their winter hunts; he asked them to decide at once where they would pass the coming winter, for upon their decision depended the size of the order for goods that must be sent on the fire boat, which was to return down-river in the morning. Loud clapping of hands and cries of approval answered this last statement, and then Crow Foot, the greatest chief, perhaps, of the confederacy, said, "Far Thunder, brother! Your offer to winter-trade with us is the best news we have ever had. No more will our young men be obliged to make long and dangerous journeys through winter snows and killing blizzards to the fort across from here for fresh supplies of powder and balls, and other things. No longer will our hunters be obliged to sit idle in their lodges. Brother, I think we may safely leave the choice of our coming winter-hunting country to you!"

"Ai! Ai! Far Thunder, brother, the words of Crow Foot are our words!" cried some of the chiefs. And others said, "Yes, Far Thunder, be yours the choice!"

"I thank you for your generosity," my uncle replied. "Brothers, I choose a part of our country that is black with buffalo; whose wooded valleys shelter countless elk and deer. In its very center will I build my trade-house. Brothers, before the Moon of Falling Leaves is ended you shall see it standing, full of goods, at the mouth of On-the-Other-Side Bear River!"

"Ha! At the mouth of the Musselshell, where the steamboats will unload the trade goods almost at our doors!" I said to myself.

"No! No! I protest! Not there, brothers!" cried Lone Bull, the Gros Ventre chief. "That is too dangerous a country! Last winter, during all its moons, the Assiniboins were encamped in its northern part, the valley of Little River [Milk River on the maps. So named by Lewis and Clark], and the Crows were at the same time camping in the valley of On-the-Other-Side Bear River, where they will doubtless hunt again this coming winter!"

"Ha! All the more reason that we should winter there!" cried Big Lake. "We have too long neglected that part of our country. It is our plain duty to go down there and clean it of our enemies and keep it clean of them. If we fail to do so, they will be soon claiming it their very own, the gift of their gods to them."

"Right you are, brother," cried Crow Foot, "and wise is Far Thunder! He could not have made a better choosing. What say you all? Is it decided that we winter down there?"

"Yes! Yes!" they all answered—all but Lone Bull and his under-chiefs.

"You still object to the choice?" said Big Lake to him.

"I do, though I shall be there with you. My silence now is my warning to you all that you are making a mistake for which we shall pay dearly with our blood!" he answered.

"Ha! Since when were we afraid of our enemies!" Calf Shirt exclaimed.

So was that matter settled. White Wolf knocked the ashes from the smoke pipe, and the chiefs filed out of the lodge to go their homeward ways. As the women returned, I said to my chum, "Pitamakan, almost-brother, we are certainly going to see some exciting, perhaps dangerous times down in that On-the-Other-Side Bear River country!"

"Excitement, danger, they make life," he answered.

Tsistsaki, coming in, heard my remark. She turned to my uncle. "So, man mine, we go to the On-the-Other-Side Bear River country, do we? Yes? Oh, I am glad! Down there grow plenty of plums. I shall gather quantities of them for our winter use!"

We went out, mounted our horses, and hurried home and to bed. That is, Tsistsaki and I did; my uncle worked all night, writing out his trade-goods orders. The steamboat men worked all night, too, unloading freight for the fort, and when I awoke in the morning the boat had left with its load of company furs.

When we were eating breakfast, my uncle said to us, "Well, woman, well, youngster, we start upon a new trail now, a trail of my own making, and I feel that it is going to be a trail easy and worth blazing. All that I have in the world, about twenty thousand dollars, I am putting into the venture, and on top of that I am asking for more than ten thousand dollars' worth of goods on a year's time. Thomas, we have just got to pay that bill when it comes due, fourteen months from now, or Wesley Fox's name will become a byword in St. Louis."

"We shall pay it, sir," I said.

"Absolutely, we shall pay it, if I have to beg robes and beaver skins from my people to make up the amount!" Tsistsaki declared.

Looking back at it after all these years, I see that the dissolution of the American Fur Company was an historical event. Its founders and its later owners, the Chouteaus, had been the first to profit by the discoveries of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and year by year they had built a string of trading-posts along the Missouri, which did an enormous business in trading with the various tribes of Indians for their buffalo robes and beaver and other furs. But little by little the richness and vastness of the Missouri River country became known to the outside world; first came various opposition fur-traders, then settlers upon the rich bottom lands of the river.

Before the settlers the Indians and the buffaloes fled, and the income of the company correspondingly decreased. The Chouteaus simply could not brook opposition, or trade with penny-saving settlers, profitable as that might have been; so in this year of 1865 they went out of business. At the time only two of the company posts, Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and Fort Benton were in what may be termed still virgin country; that is, country still rich in buffaloes and fur animals and controlled by various powerful tribes of Indians. It was fear of the Indians that kept the settlers back.

We were to embark for the mouth of the Musselshell upon the next steamboat that arrived, and my uncle was very busy getting together our necessary equipment and engaging the help that we should need. I helped him as much as I could, but found time to ride over to the camp on the Teton and ask Pitamakan to go down-river with us. His father objected to his going, on the ground that he was needed in camp to herd the large band of horses that belonged to the family, and in which I had then about forty head, my very own horses. But finally a youth was found to take his place, and Pitamakan was free to come with us. On the last day of May the second steamboat of the season tied up at the river-bank in front of the fort, and in the afternoon of the following day we went aboard it with our outfit and were off upon our new adventure. The outfit comprised ten engagés, all of them with their wives, women of the Pikuni, several of whom had children; six work-horses and two heavy wagons; three ordinary saddle-horses, property of the engagés, and three fast buffalo-runners, one of which was Is-spai-u, the Spaniard, the most noted, the most valuable buffalo-horse in all the Northwest; eleven Indian lodges, one to each family; tools of all kinds; some provisions; a six-pounder cannon with a few balls and plenty of grapeshot; and of course our own personal weapons.

The women were tremendously excited over their first ride in a steamboat; they marveled at the swiftness with which it sped down the river and cried out in terror every time the boilers let off their surplus steam with a loud roaring. Soon after passing the mouth of the Shonkin, a few miles below the fort, we sighted buffaloes, and from there on to our destination we were never out of sight of them grazing in the bottom lands, filing down the precipitous sides of the valley to water and climbing out to graze upon the wide plains.

Other kinds of game were also constantly in sight, elk, white-tailed deer and mule deer, antelopes, bighorns upon the cliffs, wolves and coyotes, and now and then a grizzly.

All too quickly we sped down the river, which is swift and narrow here, and at night tied up at the mouth of Cow Creek, where twelve years later a small party of us from Fort Benton were to fight the Nez Percés, just before General Miles rounded them up. This was the Middle Creek—Stahk-tsi-ki-e-tuk-tai—of the Blackfeet, so named because it rises in the depression between the Bear Paw and the Little Rocky Mountains.

Shortly before noon the next day the boat landed us and our outfit at the mouth of the Musselshell River. There was a fine grove of cottonwoods bordering the stream, but we had no thought of taking advantage of its cool, shady shelter. Instead we put up our lodges in the open bottom on the west side of the Musselshell, about three hundred yards from it and something like fifty yards back from the shore of the Missouri. My uncle declared that we had too many of them and made one lodge suffice for three families. We therefore put up four lodges, as closely together as possible, and cut and hauled logs for a barrier round them. We completed the barrier that evening and felt that we were fairly well protected from the attacks of war parties. As Pitamakan truly said, we were camped right upon one of the greatest war trails in the country. Crows, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes going north, and Assiniboins, Crees, and Yanktonnais going south, here came to cross the Missouri upon the wide and shallow ford just below the mouth of the Musselshell. Had my uncle been unable to buy the six-pounder cannon from Carroll and Steell, I doubt whether he would have ventured to build a post at this place. We felt that "thunder mouth" would be of as much service to us in a fight with a war party as fifty experienced plainsmen would be, could they be obtained. The Indians were terribly afraid of cannon, not so much because of the execution they did, I have often thought, as because of the tremendous roar of their discharge. To the mind of the red man it was too much like the fearful reverberations of their dread thunder bird, wanton slayer of men and animals, shatterer of trees and of the very rocks of the mountains.

Taking no chances with our horses, we picketed them that evening with long ropes close to our barricade, and at bedtime Pitamakan and I went out and slept in their midst; but nothing happened to disturb our rest. At daylight we arose and turned the work-horses loose to graze near by until we needed them. The day broke clear and warm. Up in the pine-clad bad-land breaks that formed the east side of the Musselshell Valley we could see numerous bands of buffaloes, and there were more in the valley itself and in the bottom of the Missouri directly across from us. Hundreds of antelopes were with the buffaloes, and elk and deer were moving about in the edge of the timber bordering the smaller stream. We went over to the Musselshell and bathed, and then heard Tsistsaki calling us to come and eat.

"Now, then, you youngsters," my uncle said to us when we were seated, "the engagés have their instructions, and here are yours. You are not to lift a hand toward the building of this fort, for I have three other uses for you. You are to take good care of the horses, keep the camp well supplied with meat, and be ever on the lookout for war parties."

"Easy enough!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "With so little to do, I see us growing fat, and with fat comes laziness. I see this camp going hungry before many moons have passed."

"You needn't joke," said my uncle, very seriously. "This is no joking matter. Upon the alertness and watchfulness of you two depend our lives and the success of this undertaking!"

"I take shame to myself," Pitamakan said. "As you say, this is important work that you charge us with. If trouble comes, it shall be through no fault of ours!"

CHAPTER II

A HOSTILE TRIBE LEAVES FOOTPRINTS

By the time Pitamakan and I had finished breakfast the engagés had hitched up the teams and gone to cut logs, and my uncle was marking out the site for the fort on level ground just behind our barricade. He had drawn the plan for it while we were coming down the river. It was to be in the form of a square. The south, west, and north sides were each to be formed by the walls of a building eighty feet long, twenty feet wide, nine feet high. The roof was to be of poles heavily covered with well-packed earth. At the southwest and northeast corners there were to be bastions with portholes for the cannon and for rifles. The east side of the square was to be a high stockade of logs with a strong gate in it.

Leaving my uncle at his work, Pitamakan and I watered the saddle-horses and then, saddling two, rode out after meat. We could, of course, have gone into the timber just above the log-cutters and killed some deer or elk, but we wanted first to explore the valley. Here and there were narrow groves of timber with growths of willows between them; and again long stretches where the grass grew to the very edge of the banks.

We carefully examined the dusty game trails and every sandbar and mud slope of the river for signs of man, but not a single moccasin track did we see. That was no proof, however, that war parties had not recently passed up or down the valley. Instead of following the course of the river, they were far more likely to keep well up in the breaks on the east side of the valley, from which they could constantly see far up and down it.

I was not very keen for hunting that morning, because I was worrying about my uncle's charge to us. "Almost-brother," I said presently as I brought my horse to a stand, "the load that Far Thunder has put upon us is too heavy for our backs. Look, now, at this great country; this brush and timber-bordered stream; those deep, pine-clad bad-land breaks; the great plain to the west, seamed with coulees; the heavily timbered valley of the Big River. We cannot possibly watch it all. We have not the eyes of the gods to see right through the trees and brush and discover what they conceal. Watch as we may, a war party can easily come right down to the mouth of this stream and attack the log-cutters or charge our barricade, and we never know of their approach until we hear their shots and yells!"

"What you say is plain truth!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "But well you know that Far Thunder is a wise chief. He does not expect us to do the impossible; his heavy talk was just to make us as watchful and careful as we possibly can be. But come, we waste time. We have to provide meat for the middle-of-the-day eating!"

"All right, we go," I answered, "but I am uneasy. When we return to camp I shall say a few words to Far Thunder."

Not far ahead a band of a hundred and more buffaloes were filing down a sharp, bare ridge of the bad lands to water. Under cover of the brush we rode to the point they would strike and awaited their coming. They were thirsty; the big cow in front was stepping faster and faster as she neared the foot of the slope; then, scenting the water, she broke into a lope. The whole band came thundering after her, raising a cloud of fine, light dust.

We let our eager horses go when the buffaloes were about fifty yards from us. Pitamakan shot down the old lead cow, and I a fat two-year-old bull; then what a scattering there was!

Drawing my six-shooter, I turned my horse after another two-year-old bull and gained upon it, but just as I was about to fire it sprang sharply round and dodged back past me. My horse turned, too, with a suddenness that all but unseated me. He had the bit in his teeth. I could not have checked him if I would, and he was determined that the bull should not escape. Nor did it. I overtook and downed it after a chase of several hundred yards, but was then, of course, out of the run. Away up the flat Pitamakan was still in the thick of the fleeing band. I saw him shoot twice, and then he, too, came to a stand. In all we had shot six fine animals, meat enough to last our camp for some time. We carefully butchered them all, cutting the carcasses into portions that could be easily loaded into the wagon that would come for them, and then, packing upon our horses several sets of the boss ribs for dinner, we started back.

The day was now very hot; so we rode in the shade of the timber bordering the stream and in a short time entered the big grove at the mouth of it. We could plainly hear the incessant thudding of axes and the crash of the big cottonwood as it struck the ground. I told Pitamakan that the men were working like beavers, and then he laughed. It was a simile quite new to him.

There was here dense underbrush, much of which was higher than our heads and penetrable only by the well-worn zigzag trails of game. We were following what seemed to be the most direct of the trails and were now so near the choppers that we could plainly hear several of them talking, but still, owing to the dense, high brush, we were unable to see any of them. Then suddenly, right in front of us, a shot rang out; and in answer to it, Pitamakan brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired at something that I could dimly see tearing away from us through a thick growth of rosebushes. "Enemies! My horse is hit! Look out!"

Simultaneously we heard a piercing shriek of pain and fear, the well-known voice of Louis, the cordelier, he who had bewailed the death of the company and the loss of his promised pension. "Help! Help! I am shot! I die! Help, messieurs! Ze enemy, he comes, tousans of heem!"

I grasped the situation at once and, fearing that others of the choppers would mistake us for enemies, dashed on past Pitamakan, shouting, "Don't shoot! It is we! Don't shoot!" I cleared the high brush just as the roused men were gathering in a circle about Louis, who was still wildly shrieking for help.

"Now, what is all this about?" cried my uncle as he came running up to the group.

"I am shot! Me, I die!" Louis cried.

"He thought us enemies. He fired at Pitamakan and got shot himself," I explained.

"Let us see the wound," my uncle demanded.

"No use! I die!"

"Throw him down, men, throw him down! We'll see how badly he is hurt!" my uncle ordered; and down he went.

"Huh! Just as I thought! Nothing but a bullet scratch! Get up, you crazy scamp! Get up! Go to the river and wash yourself, and then come back to work!" said my uncle disgustedly.

"Where is his rifle?" some one asked.

"Dropped right where he fired it," I hazarded; and there it was found.

"Wal, now, me, I call Louis's hittin' that hoss a plumb miracle!" exclaimed an American engagé, Illinois Joe, so called because he was always talking about the glories of that State. "To my certain knowledge that there is the fust time Louis ever come nigh hittin' what he aimed to kill!"

The men resumed their work, and my uncle went to the camp with us. We unloaded the boss ribs and picketed our horses, Pitamakan rubbing some marrow grease into the wound of his animal. I then told my uncle that I thought that we could not possibly guard the men from sudden surprise by the enemy.

"You will do the best you can, and that is all I ask from you," he answered. "From now on, one of the engagés shall stand guard while the others work, and I will take a turn at it myself. You have meat up there? Take a team and wagon and bring it in."

We had the meat in camp by two o'clock; then my uncle advised us to ride out upon discovery. As Pitamakan's runner would be of no service for some time to come, I borrowed Is-spai-u and let him have my fast horse. We could, of course, have ridden the scrub horses of the engagés, but did not care to trust our lives to their slow running in case we should be surprised by a war party.

Is-spai-u was a horse with a history. Four summers before, in the spring of 1861, a war party of seven of the Pikuni, led by One Horn, a noted warrior and medicine man, had gone south on a raid with the avowed intention never to turn back until they had penetrated far into the always-summer land and taken fine horses from the Spanish settlers of that country. That meant a journey southward on foot of all of fifteen hundred miles and an absence from us of at least a year. They chose to go on foot because they could thus most surely pass through that long stretch of hostile country without being discovered by the enemy.

Fifty—yes, a hundred—warriors begged One Horn to be allowed to join his party, but he had had a dream in which the Seven Persons, as the constellation of the Great Bear was called, had appeared and advised him what to do, and he would take only six men. Each one of the six was a man of proved valor and intelligence.

The summer passed and the winter. One Horn and his party were to return in the Moon of Full-Grown Leaves, but they came not. With the appearance of the Berries-Ripe Moon they were long overdue, and some said that without doubt their bones were whitening on the sands of the grassless plains far to the south. Still, hoping against hope, the old medicine man prayed on for them at setting of the sun, and all the people prayed with him.

It was in the Moon of Falling Leaves—October—that we in Fort Benton noticed a lone horseman fording the river and wondered who he could be. Then we saw that it was One Horn. He approached the gate, mournfully calling over and over the names of his six companions; and we knew that they were dead, and the women set up a great wailing for them. When he rode slowly into the court we thought that we had never seen so thin and careworn a man; he was just bones covered with wrinkled skin, and across his breast was a tightly drawn bandage of what had evidently been his buffalo-leather leggings.

We were so painfully struck with his forlorn appearance that we did not at first notice the horse he rode; but when he slipped from it and staggered into the outstretched arms of the crying women, Antoine, the stableman, stepped up to it to lead it away, and he cried out, "See, my frien's, dis horse so beautiful!" We almost cried out with him. The animal was shining black and in good flesh, clean-limbed, of powerful build, gentle and proud.

"A thoroughbred, if ever there was one!" said my uncle, who was standing beside me. "Unquestionably of Andalusian stock!"

Tsistsaki had One Horn carried into our quarters and a robe couch made up for him. A woman brought in some soup hot from her hearth, but he would take only a few sups of it. My uncle cut away the bandage round his breast and disclosed a jagged wound several inches long, partly healed, but badly discolored and suppurating at the lower end.

"It was all healed over, then it got bad again," One Horn whispered.

My uncle shook his head. "Mortification has set in; I fear there is no hope for him," he said in English to Tsistsaki and me.

Then he carefully washed the wound, medicated it, and put a clean, soft bandage upon it.

When the wounded man awoke that evening, my uncle asked him to tell us his adventures on the long south trail.

We thought that he was never going to answer, so long did he stare straight up at the roof; but finally he said, so low that it was with straining ears that we heard him: "Far Thunder, Tsistsaki! My words shall be few. We went far into the country of the Spanish white men and came upon a camp of plains people and in their herds of good horses saw the horse that I rode here to-day. We raided that camp and took many horses, among them the black, Is-spai-u, as I have named him. We got safe away from that camp. But then—oh, my friends! through my fault my companions died. I was in great hurry to get back here. I would not heed the warnings of my dreams. I took chances. Through a rough country I led my men in the daytime when I should have traveled at night. We were seen by the enemy, but saw them not. They made ready for our coming and suddenly rode out at us. My companions fought bravely, killed many and were themselves killed. I was wounded, but because I was upon this black horse I escaped. So swift was he that none of the enemy could overtake me. At first my wound was very bad; then it got better, and I took courage. I said to myself that I would return to this south country with all the warriors of the Pikuni and avenge the death of my companions. Then my wound got steadily worse. Far Thunder, my wound is killing me. No, don't deny it; you know it as well as I do. From the time you and I first met we have been friends. You have been good to me. Now we part. This night I am going upon the long trail to the Sand Hills. I give you the black horse. You must promise me always to keep him. You promise? That is good! North and south, east and west, he is the swiftest, the most tireless horse on all the plains. I know that you will be good to him. I can talk no more."

Nor did he ever speak again. He soon became unconscious and died before midnight.

Now, my Uncle Wesley was a great sportsman and loved more than anything else the excitement of a buffalo run with a good horse under him, a bow in his hand, and a quiver full of arrows at his back. "You can have your rifle and your six-shooters for the chase," he would often say, "but the bow for me. While you are fooling away time reloading your weapons, I shall be slipping arrows into good, fat cows!"

Several months after the death of One Horn, a herd of buffaloes drifted into the upper end of the bottom and gave him a chance to try Is-spai-u. Word spread that my uncle was going to run the buffaloes, and when he rode out from the fort all the men followed him who had horses or could borrow them. I shall not go into the details of that run, but will simply say that when it ended twenty-seven buffaloes lay strung along the plain with my uncle's arrows in them! It was the best run ever made in the whole Northwest, so far as was known, and the success of it was owing more to the swiftness and endurance of Is-spai-u than to the skill of my uncle with the bow. The reputation of the black horse was established. Through visiting Kootenay Indians it spread to all the west-side tribes, the Kalispels, Nez Percés, and Snakes. When bands from the Blackfoot tribes came into the fort at different times in order to trade, the first request of the chiefs and warriors was for a sight of the wonderful animal.

In time our engagés took word of him to our different forts along the river, and thus all the other tribes, Sioux, Assiniboins, Crows, Crees, and Yanktonnais, came to know about him. Deputations from all the tribes that were at peace with the Blackfeet came to the fort and made fabulous offers for the animal. At the risk of their lives, some Snakes brought in one hundred and ten good ordinary horses that they wanted to trade for the black runner. A chief of the Yanktonnais, then trading mostly with the Hudson's Bay Company at their Assiniboin River post, sent word that he would give two hundred horses for him. My uncle's one answer to all of the would-be purchasers was that the black was not for sale. We soon heard that many a warrior of the tribes hostile to the Blackfeet had vowed to get the horse in one way or another. Within a year three desperate attempts were made to steal him right out from the fort, and the last raiders, three Assiniboins, paid for the attempt with their lives.

On the evening before we left Fort Benton George Steell had begged my uncle to leave Is-spai-u in his care. "You know how flies swarm about a molasses keg. Well, so will the hostiles swarm about you down there when they learn that the runner is with you. Be sensible for once, Wesley, and let me have him until your fort is completed."

"George, I know you mean well," my uncle replied, "but, consarn it, you're too reckless! You would cripple him in no time. Is-spai-u goes with me!"

Half angry at that, Steell shrugged his shoulders and turned away from us without another word. My uncle had been right in refusing him the use of the animal; he was the most reckless, hard-riding buffalo hunter in all the country.

After this explanation, you can imagine my pride and happiness in mounting Is-spai-u for the first time. He was eager to go; I let him have the bit.

"Well, almost-brother," I said to Pitamakan, "we are off upon discovery. Which way shall we go?"

"First, straight to the head of the breaks yonder, from which we can see far up and down Big River and the plains to the north of it," he answered.

We passed through the grove in which the men were working, crossed the Musselshell and began the steep climb, following a game trail that was sure to keep us out of trouble in the maze of bad-land breaks ahead. Two thirds of the way up the breaks we entered the lowermost of the scrub-pine and juniper growths that concealed the heads of most of the coulees, from which great numbers of mule deer and occasionally some fine-looking elk fled at our approach. Within an hour we arrived at the summit, and there in a dense grove found a war lodge that had been put up not more than three nights before. By its size, and the signs within, we judged that it had been the one night's resting-place of a party of between fifteen and twenty men, and the pattern of the beadwork of a pair of worn-out moccasins that we found partly charred in the fireplace proved to us that they were Assiniboins. Circling the place, we found their trail in the spongy, volcanic ash of which the bad lands are mainly composed. They were going south, and I said to Pitamakan that they would doubtless come back the same way from their raid against the Crows, or whatever tribe they were heading for, and would, of course, discover our camp.

"Well, what else can you expect? I should not be astonished if some enemies already have their eyes upon it," he answered.

After watching for some time the valley of the Missouri and the great plains to the north of it we turned south along the heads of the breaks and traveled at a good pace for an hour or more along a rolling plain. We then turned westward into the valley of the Musselshell and saw across it the narrow and sparsely timbered valley of a small stream putting in from the Moccasin Mountains, the eastern end of which, Black Butte, seemed very near to us. I had read the journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition many times, and so recognized that small and generally dry watercourse by their description of it.

The sun was near setting when we struck the small grove of timber at the junction of the two streams, and there in a dusty game trail we found the moccasined footprints of men—a war party, of course—traveling north. We could not determine how recently they had passed, but upon following the trail to the shore of the river we saw where they had sat down to remove their moccasins and leggings, and we found the tracks of their bare feet in the mud at the edge of the stream. In several of the footprints the water was still muddy; in others the mud had settled.

WE FOUND THE TRACKS OF THEIR BARE FEET IN THE MUD

"They have crossed here since we left the head of the breaks!" Pitamakan exclaimed.

"Yes!" I said. "We must get to camp with the news as fast as our horses can carry us!"

CHAPTER III

FAR THUNDER RIDS THE PLAINS OF A RASCAL

We crossed the river and rode up Sacajawea Creek to the valley. Then we climbed to the rim of the plain and rode along it to camp. I had constantly to hold in Is-spai-u so that Pitamakan, riding my fast buffalo-runner, could keep up with me. It was dusk when we arrived in camp. The women—some of them, not Tsistsaki, you may be sure—cried out in alarm at the news that we had found the fresh trail of a war party traveling down the valley, and Louis wailed, "Pauvre me! Pauvre me! I am lose my pension; and now I shall be keeled by zese war parties! Oh, wat a countree terrible ees zis!"

"Oh, be still, Windy!" Sol Abbott growled at him. "You make us all tired! Be a man!"

Solomon Abbott, a lank, red-haired Missourian six feet two inches in height, a famous plainsman and trapper and a brave and kindly fellow, was our best man. He was helping in our work only because of his great liking for my uncle. As soon as our post was built, he would again go out with his woman upon his lone pursuit of the beaver. The Blackfeet had affectionately named him Great Hider, because he was so crafty in escaping from the enemy. He had had many thrilling escapes from the Assiniboins, the Sioux, and the Crows, and had killed so many of them that they had come to believe that he was proof against their arrows and bullets.

"Well, Sol," said my uncle to him now, "it is best to have the horses right here in the barricade with us this night, don't you think?"

"Sure thing! Right in here, and some of us on guard all night!" he answered.

Some of the men were sent to bring in the animals that were picketed near by, and Tsistsaki called Pitamakan and me to eat. Abbott presently came into our lodge, and my uncle and he decided upon the different watches for the night. Pitamakan, my uncle, and I were to take our turn at two o'clock and watch until daylight, about four o'clock, when the horses were to be taken out to graze. A night in the stockade would be no hardship to them, for the new grass was so luxuriant that they would eat all that they could hold.

Another point of discussion was whether the cannon should be loaded and made ready for the expected attack. Pitamakan and I were asked how many we thought there might be in the war party and replied that there were between fifteen and twenty men, certainly not more than twenty-five.

"Well, we'll load the cannon, because it should be loaded and kept loaded and the touch-hole well protected from dampness," said my uncle, "but we will not fire it at any small war party; our rifles can take care of them. We will just keep the cannon cached, as a surprise when a big war party comes."

The lodge fires did not burn long that night. Pitamakan and I went to sleep while our elders were still smoking and talking.

Promptly on time Abbott came into our lodge and awakened us, and my uncle, Pitamakan, and I were soon in our places at the edge of the barricade. There was a piece of a moon, the stars were very bright, and in the north there was a perceptible whitish glow in the sky, as if from some far distant aurora playing upon the snow and ice of the always-winter land. Pitamakan, coming and standing at my side, said that Cold-Maker was dancing up there and making medicine for the attack upon the sun that he would begin a few moons hence.

"The old men, our wise ones, say," he went on, "that Cold-Maker may sometime obtain what he is ever seeking, a medicine so powerful that it will enable him to drive the sun far, far into the south and keep him there. Think how terrible it would be! Our beautiful prairies and mountains would become an always-winter land! The game, the trees and brush and grasses, would all die off, and we, of course, should perish with them!"

"Don't you worry about that!" I told him. "Sun has a certain trail to follow, and he is all-powerful. Let him make what medicine he may, old Cold-Maker cannot halt his course!"

"Ha! That is my thought, too. Wise though our old men are, they certainly don't know all about what is going on up there in the sky!"

Off to the south of us I heard my uncle mutter something about youthful philosophers and then laugh quietly.

From where we stood, with our shoulders and heads concealed by some brush stuck into the barricade, we could see the black mass of the grove and the silvery gleam of the river sweeping by it. The hush and quiet of the night were almost unbroken; not even an owl was hooting. The only sound that we could hear at all was the murmur of the river close under the cutbank on our left. The Missouri is a deceptive river. Though its heaving, eddying, swift flow is apparently without obstructions, yet it has a voice—an insistent, deep, plaintive voice that rises and falls and makes the listener imagine things; that seems to be trying to tell all the strange scenes and changes it has witnessed down through the countless ages of its being.

"Do you hear it, the voice, the singing of the river? Isn't it beautiful?" I said.

"It is terrible, heart-chilling. What you hear is not the voice of the river; it is the singing of the dread Under-Water People who live down there in its depths and ever watch for a chance to drag us down to our death!"

My uncle slipped up behind us so quietly that we were startled. "You youngsters quit talking; use your eyes instead of your mouths!" he whispered, and stole back to his stand on the south side of the enclosure.

"We were and we are using our eyes, but maybe we were talking too loud; we will whisper from now on," said Pitamakan.

"Do you think that the war party discovered our camp last evening?" I asked.

"They were coming this way and had plenty of time before dark to arrive in the grove down there where is all the chopping. No doubt they saw us ride out of the valley and along its rim. Yes, almost-brother, you may be sure that they have seen our camp. Will they try to break in here and take our horses? Hide in the grove and attack the men when they go to work? Go their way without attempting to trouble us? Ha! I wonder!"

An hour passed, perhaps more; and then from the direction of the grove we saw a dark form slowly approaching us; then came more forms, all upon hands and knees, sneaking through the grass like so many wolves.

Pitamakan nudged me with his elbow. "Don't shoot until they come quite close," he whispered. I answered him by pressing his arm.

Meantime my uncle had also discovered the enemy and now came to us, crouching low and stepping noiselessly; he got between us and whispered: "Aim at men at right and at left. I will shoot at a center man. Pull trigger when I say now!"

I selected my mark, the man at the extreme end of the line nearest the river, and anxiously awaited the word to fire. I thought that my uncle would never give it; the longer I aimed at my mark the worse my rifle seemed to wabble; the bead sight made circles all round the outline of the creeping man. At last, "Now!" or rather, "Kyi!" my uncle said and pulled the trigger as he said it. The flash from his gun blinded me for a moment, and I did not fire. But Pitamakan's rifle cracked, even a little before my uncle fired, and we heard a groan and a sharp cry of pain. My vision came back to me. I saw fifteen or twenty men running from us, making for the grove. I fired at one of them, and missed. After all my experience in shooting at night at the word of command, I had been too slow!

Right after I fired, the aroused men came running with weapons in hand, and the women, crouching low within the lodges, hushed the children as best they could.

"What is up? What did you fire at? Where is the enemy?" the men cried, crowding close to us. My uncle was hurriedly answering them when, from down near the grove, ten or twelve guns spit fire at us, and we heard several balls thud into the logs in front of us, and one ripped through the leather skin of a lodge. We ducked, and the men returned the enemy fire.

"Well, Wesley, I call this downright mean of you!" Sol Abbott said to my uncle reproachfully. "Why on earth didn't you let us in on this? Why didn't you call me, anyhow? Pluggin' these here cut-throat night raiders is my long suit, and you know it! Here you've had all the sport yourself! 'Twasn't fair, by gum!"

"Oh, well, they were but few. I knew that they would run as soon as we fired. I didn't think it worth while to awaken you. I really believe that I never gave you a thought."

"You got one of them!" some one exclaimed.

"Two! Two of them are lying out there in the grass," I said. I had had my eyes upon them all the time I was reloading my rifle.

"Perhaps they are not dead; we'll go out and soon finish them off," Abbott proposed.

"You shall not!" my uncle exclaimed. But he was too late; Pitamakan was already over the barricade and running to the enemy that he had shot. We saw him stoop over the fallen man, then rise with a bow and a shield that he waved aloft with his free hand.

"I count coup upon this enemy. I call upon you, Far Thunder, and you, almost-brother, to witness that I take these weapons from this enemy that I have killed!"

"We hear you!" I answered.

"Far Thunder," he called to my uncle, "come and take the weapons of your kill!"

My uncle laughed. "I am past all that," he began, but never finished what he intended to say.

"Far Thunder, my man," Tsistsaki interrupted, "think how proud of you I shall be when those weapons out there are hung with the others that you have taken upon the walls of the home that we are building here! As you love me, go out and count your coup!"

So, to please her, and, I doubt not, with no little pride in what he had accomplished, my uncle went out to his fallen enemy and leaned over him; then, with a flintlock gun in his hand, he suddenly straightened up and cried, in the Blackfoot tongue, of course:

"I call upon you all to witness that I killed this man! I count coup upon one of our greatest enemies, a chief of the Assiniboins, Sliding Beaver!"

Oh, how we shouted when we heard that name! We could hardly believe our ears. And Tsistsaki sprang over the barricade and ran toward my uncle, crying, "Are you sure?" We all followed her and gathered round the fallen man, forgetting in the excitement of the moment that we were offering a large and compact mark to the guns of his followers. Day was beginning to break, and we could see the man's features fairly well—the massive, big-nosed, cruel-mouthed face, with the broad scar across the forehead, mark of the lance of our chief, Big Lake.

"He is Sliding Beaver and no other!" Sol Abbott cried. "Wesley, my old friend, here's to you! You sure have rid these plains of the most blood-thirsty rascal, the meanest, low-down murderer, that ever traipsed across them."

No fear of the enemy could now hold back the other women of our camp. They came running to us with their children squawling after them, for the moment forgotten. Crowding round my uncle, they chanted over and over:

"A great chief is Far Thunder! Oho! Aha! Our enemy he has killed! He has killed Sliding Beaver, the cut-throat chief!"

"Well, what shall we do with him—and the other one?" I asked.

"Into the river they go!" Abbott answered. And in they went with big splashes. As they sank, Pitamakan cried out, "Under-Water People! We give to you these bodies! If you can injure them still more than we have done, we pray you to do so!"

It was now broad daylight. After the enemy had fired their lone, long-range volley at us we heard no more from them, nor could we see them; they were doubtless down in the grove. We returned to the stockade, and my uncle told a couple of the men to take the horses out to graze; but they did not go far out with them. The women hurried into the lodges and began preparing breakfast, singing, many of them, the song of victory. They were happy over the death of the dread Assiniboin chief. We remained outside, watching the valley and counting up the record of his terrible deeds, so far as we knew them. Trading entirely with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, he had always been an enemy of the American Fur Company and at various times had waylaid and killed eight of its trappers. Pitamakan said that he had killed four men and seven women of his tribe, and then recounted the well-known tale of his fight with Big Lake.

Leading about a hundred mounted warriors, Sliding Beaver had approached a camp of the Pikuni and signaled that he had come to fight its chief. The challenge was accepted, and presently Big Lake, armed with only a lance, rode out to meet him. The Assiniboin was carrying a gun and a bow and had no lance.

"You proposed this fight, so you must use the weapons of my choice; go get a lance from your warriors."

Sliding Beaver rode back to them, left his gun and bow, borrowed a lance, and, raising the Assiniboin war song in his terrible voice,—a thunderous voice it was,—wheeled his horse about and rode straight at Big Lake, who likewise charged at him. They neared each other at tremendous speed, and Big Lake tried to force his horse right against the other animal; but at the last Sliding Beaver turned the animal aside and they swept past. They lunged out with their lances, and Big Lake slightly wounded the Assiniboin in his shoulder, getting not even a scratch in return. Then again they charged, and Big Lake, sure that his enemy would not meet him fairly, swerved his horse to the right just as the other was doing likewise, dodged Sliding Beaver's thrust, and with his spear gave him a glancing blow on the forehead that laid open the skin, but failed to pierce the bone. But Sliding Beaver reeled in his saddle from the force of it, and a mighty shout went up from the Pikuni, for they thought he would fall from his horse.

He recovered his seat, however, and fled far, far out across the plain. Big Lake, try as he would, could not overtake him. His followers fled as soon as they saw that he was running away, and the Pikuni killed a number of them. The victory was without question with Big Lake; he had not only wounded Sliding Beaver in fair combat, but in the presence of a hundred of his warriors had proved him to be a coward.

"I'll bet he told his warriors he had broken his lance and had to flee, and that he did break it against a rock before his men overtook him!" my uncle exclaimed.

Long afterwards we learned he had done that very thing.

The women presently called us all to eat. We washed and went inside, and Tsistsaki said to my uncle, "Chief, and chief-killer, be seated. Eat the food of chiefs!" Setting before him a huge dish of boiled boss ribs and a piece of berry pemmican as large as my two fists, she served Pitamakan and me equally large portions of the rich food, and gave us cups of strong coffee and slices of sour-dough bread. We ate with tremendous appetite, having been up so long, but I could see that my uncle was worried about something; I surmised what it was before he said: "Well, Thomas, our troubles begin. Without doubt Sliding Beaver's followers are cached down there in the grove. I dare not take the men to work this morning."

"What did he say?" Pitamakan asked Tsistsaki. She told him.

"I can see no help for it," said my uncle; "the men must remain in camp to-day, for those cut-throats are doubtless in the grove lying in wait."

"Yes, and they may remain there more than one day; they may hold up our work many days," Tsistsaki put in.

Just then we heard a woman cry, "Oh, look! Look! The cut-throats are going!"

We all ran outside and looked where she was pointing. Below the mouth of the Musselshell, the Missouri bent toward the south and swept the base of a high, cut bluff. The enemy were ascending it, heading, apparently, for the next bottom below. We counted seventeen men, about the number that we thought there should be.

"Ha! All is well!" my uncle cried. "Men, finish your breakfast and let us get to work!"

We went back to our lodge, and when Tsistsaki had poured us fresh coffee Pitamakan said to my uncle: "Far Thunder, those cut-throats could have sneaked away without our knowing it. I believe that they wanted us to see them going. Why? Because they intend to sneak back, perhaps to-day, maybe to-morrow, and surprise the men when they are working down there in the timber."

Abbott had come in. My uncle turned to him and said: "You heard what he said. What do you think about it? What do you advise?"

"Well, how would it do for Thomas and Pitamakan to go down and watch that trail running over the bluff and on down the river, and for me to watch the breaks of the Musselshell and its valley above the grove? Then, if the cut-throats should come sneaking back, either the boys or I would discover them in time to warn you and the men."

"You have said it!" my uncle exclaimed. "You boys, take some middle-of-the-day food, saddle your horses, and go watch that trail!"

"Do I ride Is-spai-u?" I asked.

"Not to-day. Ride the men's horses, you two. Any old plug is fast enough to keep out of the way of a war party on foot."

Pitamakan and I were not long in getting off. We rode down through the head of the grove, crossed the Musselshell and went on, not upon the trail that the enemy had followed, but above it along the steep bad-land slope, until we could see the whole length of the trail from the junction of the two rivers on down into the next bottom, where there was a thin fringe of cottonwoods and willows.

We got down from our horses, tethered them to some juniper-brush, and scooped out comfortable sitting-places upon the steep slope. From where we sat the lower end of the grove at the mouth of the Musselshell was in sight, and well beyond it on the high ground that bordered the Missouri was our barricaded camp. Looking again into the bottom below, we saw a small bunch of bighorns, old rams apparently, heading down into its lower end; going to drink at the river, of course. Bighorns were plentiful then and for many years afterwards in all the Missouri bad-land country. A fine early morning breeze was blowing down the valley. I called Pitamakan's attention to it, and said that, if the enemy were concealed in the timber, the bighorns would apprise us of the fact. Bighorns leave their cliffs and steep slopes only when need of water or of food compels them to do so. Those we were watching traveled freely enough down the slope, but the moment they stepped out upon the level bottom land they became timid, advancing but a few steps at a time and pausing to sniff the air and stare in all directions. In this manner they crossed the narrow bottom, descended the gravelly shore below the end of the timber, and drank. We had proof enough that the Assiniboins were not in the timber.

"The gods are with us; they make the animals do scout work for us!" Pitamakan exclaimed.

"I am wholly of the opinion that the cut-throats are upon their homeward way," I said, "and that they will return with a couple of hundred warriors and try to wipe us out!"

"Yes, sooner or later we are in for a fight with them. But something tells me we are not yet through with Sliding Beaver's men."

We sprang to our feet. The west wind brought plainly to our ears the sound of shots and yells up in the big grove and the frightened cries of women in our camp above it.

"There! What did I tell you!" Pitamakan exclaimed.

"How in the world could they have got back in there without our knowing it?" I cried.

CHAPTER IV

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!

CHAPTER V

TWO CROWS RAISE THEIR RIGHT HANDS

We got back into the timber in no time.

"The crazy ones! They think that we are enemies!"

"Well," I said in answer to this dismayed exclamation of Pitamakan's, "you know what we have to do now; swim across with our letter."

"And be shot as soon as we are seen!"

"Not a shot will be fired at us. I'll see to that. Come, let us picket the horses outside the timber and hunt for a couple of dry logs for a raft," I told him.

Let me tell you that it was no fun blundering along that shore in the darkness, testing the logs we stumbled against for their dryness and trying to roll them into the water, always with the fear of feeling rattlesnake fangs burn into our hands. At last we got two logs of fair size into the water side by side and lashed them firmly together with willow withes. Lashing our clothing and weapons on top of a pile of brush in the center, we pushed out into the current—but not until Pitamakan had called upon his gods to protect us from the dread Under-Water People. He clung to the front end of the unwieldy logs with one hand, pawed the water with the other, and kicked rapidly. I did likewise at the rear of the raft, but for all our efforts we could make the raft go toward the other shore little faster than the current would take it.

It was absolutely certain that the raft would not waterlog and sink during the time that we had use for it, yet it was with feelings of dread and suspense that we worked our way well out into the center of the stream. Then Pitamakan suddenly yelled to me: "The Under-Water People! They are after us! Kick hard! Hard!"

"Oh, no! You are mistaken!" I told him.

"I am sure that they are after us!" he cried. "I touched one of them with my hand, and he hit me in my side. O sun, pity us! Help us to survive this danger!"

"Take courage! So long as we cling to the logs they can't drag us down," I told him.

"Oh, you don't understand about these Under-Water People! They can do terrible things. They are medicine."

He said no more, nor did I. It was useless for me to tell him that he had encountered a big catfish or sturgeon swimming lazily near the surface.

From where we pushed out into the river to the point where we landed must have been all of a mile. We dragged the raft out upon the sand as far as we could in case we should want to use it again and then put on our clothes and started off up the shore. In a little while, looking out through the brush and timber, we saw the ghostly outline of the steamboat close upon our left. Silently we stole to the edge of the sloping bank and looked down upon it. A reflector lantern lighted the lower deck and the boilers, flanked with cordwood, and there was a light shining through the windows of the engine-room; but no one was in sight, not even the watchman. I believed that a number of men were on guard and did not intend to take any chances with them. I whispered to Pitamakan that the time had not come for us to make our presence known, and we sat down right where we were in the brush.

Presently a big clock somewhere abaft the boilers struck the hour of three, and a tall, lank, black-whiskered man came out into the light of the lower deck and began to arouse men sitting or lying behind the rows of cordwood. "It is three o'clock," I heard him snarl. "Git a move on you! Light the fires under them boilers!"

Three or four men sprang to obey the command, and another went up to the hurricane deck to arouse the cook and his helpers.

"Hi, there, mate, throw out the gangplank and let us aboard!" I shouted.

Black whiskers jumped as if he had been shot and dodged behind a boiler; the men crouched in the shelter of the cordwood.

"Don't be afraid and don't shoot at us again. Let us aboard!" I said.

"Who be you?" the mate shouted from his shelter. "Git down there into the light and show yourself!"

I told Pitamakan to remain where he was, and, going down to the edge of the shore where the light streamed upon me, I explained that I was Thomas Fox, that I had an Indian with me, and that I had a letter to deliver into the captain's care.

"Sounds fishy to me," the mate began; then from the upper deck a deep voice called, "Slim, you let that boy and his friend on board! I know him!" And to me, "Hello, Thomas, my boy! I'm dressing. Come up to my room as soon as you get aboard and tell me all about it!"

"That I will, Mr. Page," I answered. I knew as soon as he spoke that it was Henry Page, long a pilot for the American Fur Company, and now, of course, piloting boats for the independents.

Out came the gangplank. I called to Pitamakan, and we went aboard and straight up to Mr. Page, while the mate and his men stared after us. In a few words I explained why we were there.