The War-Trail Fort: Further Adventures of Thomas Fox and Pitamakan

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!"

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.

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!

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.

"I knew," he said, "it was your Uncle Wesley and his outfit there at the mouth of the Musselshell. I learned at Fort Union that he is starting a fort there, but the captain wouldn't let me turn in when you signaled. I'll bet you had a rough time coming up here and getting across the river." Then he lowered his voice. "This captain—Wiggins is his name—is the meanest steamboat man that ever headed up this river!"

"Maybe he will not set us across the river, nor even deliver the letter," I hazarded.

"Give me the letter. I'll deliver it, and I'll put you across right now," he replied, and led the way down to the lower deck and ordered a boat put into the water.

On our way across I explained to our good friend the danger we were in from a grand attack upon us by the Assiniboins and how urgent it was that the Pikuni should get our call for help without delay.

"Well, I believe I have good news for you and your uncle," he said. "I happened to hear in Fort Union that the Assiniboins are encamped over on the Assiniboin River in Canada; so they are farther from the mouth of the Musselshell than your Pikuni over on the Marias River are. I feel sure that your friends will be with you in good time for the big battle, if there is to be one."

"In that letter to Carroll and Steell that you have my uncle also asks them to send him any loose men that can be engaged in Fort Benton. I hope that your captain will give them passage and land them at our place."

"He has to land passengers wherever they wish to go. I'll try, myself, to engage some men for you," he replied.

Then we struck the shore and with a few last words parted from our good friend.

"It wouldn't do any harm to have a short sleep before we start back," said Pitamakan.

"No sleep for me until I strike my couch in our lodge," I told him.

By that time day was breaking. We went out through the timber to our horses and found that we had picketed them upon really good grass and plenty of it. We saddled them and watered them at the river, and as we rode away from it the steamboat slipped her moorings and went on upstream.

Without adventure upon the way we arrived in camp at noon just as the men were returning to it for their dinner.

"Did you deliver the letter?" my uncle shouted eagerly.

"We did!" I shouted.

Later, while we were eating, I told the adventures of the night while Pitamakan held Tsistsaki and the other women spellbound with his description of the dangers that we had encountered. They made no comment other than a casual "Kyai-yo!" when he told of the steamboat men's firing at us, but his description of our swim and his encounter with the Under-Water Person brought forth cries of horror.

My listeners were loud in their denunciation of the steamboat captain. My uncle vowed that the Pittsburgh should never carry a bale of his furs to St. Louis or bring up freight for him.

"Well, boys," my uncle said to the men as they were starting back to work, "there's this much about it: help is sure coming to us. We'll just peg along the best we can and trust to luck that all will be well with us."

Abbott was asleep, having been on guard all night. Pitamakan and I soon lay down and slept. At supper-time we got up and had a refreshing bath in the river, where Abbott joined us, and toward dusk we three went to guard the grove during the night. My uncle arranged with the engagés to stand watch in the barricade by turns, for he was completely worn out by his day-and-night work and had to have one night of complete rest.

The night passed quietly; when morning came we were all convinced that Sliding Beaver's followers and survivors had gone on to their camp. Nevertheless, we did not intend to relax our vigilance.

According to my uncle's plan of the fort, three hundred and ten logs, twenty feet long and a foot in diameter, were required for the walls and the roof supports, and for the two bastions ninety logs twelve feet long were required. Of that large number only a few more than a hundred had been hauled out. With our present force we could not possibly build the fort in less than three months. At Abbott's suggestion that he build upon a much smaller scale, my uncle had replied, "No, sir! This place calls for a real fort, a commodious fort. I am going to have it or none at all."

On that day Pitamakan and I slept until noon and after dinner saddled Is-spai-u and my runner and rode out for meat, I, of course, upon the black.

There were plenty of buffaloes in the valley not more than a mile above camp. Pitamakan and I rode down into the grove to notify my uncle to have a man follow us with a team and wagon, for we intended to make a quick killing. Sneaking through the timber close to a herd of buffaloes and chasing them across the flat, we killed four fat ones. We hurriedly butchered them and helped the engagés to load the meat upon the wagon; then we remounted our horses.

Off to the south lay country unknown to me. "Come! Let us ride out upon discovery," I said to Pitamakan.

"I knew that was in your mind by the way you used your knife on our kills," he replied.

We rode out upon the west rim of the valley, following it to the mouth of the Sacajawea Creek, which we crossed, then again along the rim for perhaps five miles to the top of a flat butte from which we had a wonderful view of the country. Pitamakan pointed out to me where Flat Willow Creek and Box Elder Creek, at the nearest point about forty miles to the south of us, broke into the Musselshell from the Snowy Mountains. Both streams, he said, were from their mouths to their heads just one beaver pond after another.

We had, of course, disturbed numerous bands of buffaloes and antelopes along our way up the rim, and now, turning down into the valley of the Musselshell on our homeward course, we alarmed more of them.

"If any war parties are cached along here in the timber," said Pitamakan, "these running herds are putting them upon their guard!"

"Let us keep well out from the timber," I proposed.

I had no more than spoken when two men came walking slowly out from a grove about two hundred yards ahead of us, each with his right hand raised above his head, the sign for peace.

"Ha! Maybe they mean that, and maybe they are setting a trap for us; we must be cautious," said Pitamakan.

We advanced slowly until we were about a hundred yards from the signalers and brought our horses to a stand.

"Who are you?" I signed to them.

One of them, dropping his bow and arrows, extended his arms and rapidly raised and lowered them several times in imitation of the wings of a bird, the sign for the Crow tribe. Then he waved his right hand above his shoulder, the query sign that I had made.

"We want nothing to do with them," Pitamakan said to me hurriedly.

I signed that I was white.

"The rider with you, who is he? Where are you camped? Let us be friends and go together to your camp," the Crow signed. Then his companion added, "Come, let us meet and sit and smoke a peace pipe. We are two, you are two. It will be good for the four of us to be friends and smoke."

"What a lie! Now I am sure they want to trap us! Signing to us that they are but two! Close behind them the timber is full of Crows!" Pitamakan muttered.

"What shall we do?" I asked him. "Cross the river, ride off beyond the breaks, where they can't see us, and then turn homeward?"

"It would be useless to do that. They are bound north and will see our camp; we may as well make a straight ride to it."

"Well, then, we go," I said and pressed a heel against Is-spai-u's side.

Away we went, circling out from the grove; and our horses had not made four jumps when a number of Crows—at least twenty, we thought—sprang from the timber and discharged their few guns at us while the bow-and-arrow men raised the Crow war cry and uselessly flourished their weapons. Several of the bullets whizzed uncomfortably close to us.

Pitamakan was about to return their fire when I checked him. "Don't fire! We have enough trouble to face!" I cried.

Our swift horses carried us out of their range before they could load and fire their guns again.

"More trouble for us, I'm sure!" my uncle exclaimed, as we halted our sweating horses in front of the barricade just before sunset.

"Yes, a war party of twenty or twenty-five Crows fired at us. They seem to be heading this way," I replied, and told him and the men all about our meeting them, while Pitamakan answered the women's questions.

When I had finished, the engagés, Abbott excepted, of course, wore pretty long faces. They all went into Henri Robarre's lodge as we, with Abbott, answered Tsistsaki's call to supper.

We had barely finished eating, when Robarre came to the door of our lodge and asked my uncle to step outside. We all went out and found the men lined up near the passageway in the barricade.

"Huh! Still more trouble!" my uncle muttered. Then to them he said, "Well, my men, what is it?"

They looked at one another and at us hesitatingly, and several of them nudged Henri Robarre. After much urging he stepped forward and said to my uncle:

"Sare, M'sieu' Reynard! We hare mos' respec' hask dat we have hour discharge. Dat we hembark for Fort Benton on ze firs' boat dat weel take hus."

"Ha! You want to quit, do you? What is the trouble? Am I not treating you well?"

"Wait! They are to have a big surprise," said Tsistsaki and turned from us back to the lodges.

"Sare, M'sieu' Reynard," Henry continued, "eet ees no you. You hare one fine mans. Les sauvages, Assiniboins, Crows, many more zat wee' come, he are ze troub', m'sieu'."

"But you can't go back on your contracts!" my uncle exclaimed. "You all agreed to come down here and work for me a year; you signed contracts to that effect."

"Sare, honneur, we hare no sign eet ze pap' for fight heem, les sauvages. We no sign eet ze pap' for work all days and watch for les sacrés sauvages hall ze nights. Pretty soon we hall gets keel, m'sieu'. We hare no pour le combat; we hare jus' pauvre cordeliers, engagés in ze forts. M'sieu', you weel let hus go?"

I knew by the set expression of my uncle's face what his answer was to be, but he never gave it. Out came the women; their eyes were blazing, long braids were streaming, and they carried lodge-fire sticks in their hands. They charged upon their men, crying, "Cowards! You shall not desert our chief! Stay in the lodge and do our work; we'll build the fort! Give us your clothing; you shall wear our gowns!"

Never shall I forget that scene! The poor engagés shrank from the attack. Wild-eyed, they begged the women to desist, all the while getting painful whacks from their sticks and the most terrible tongue-lashing that could be given in the Blackfoot language! My uncle and Abbott laughed at their plight, and Pitamakan and I actually rolled upon the ground in a perfect frenzy of joy. When, at last, we sat up and wiped our eyes, there were the engagés heading for their lodges, and each one was followed by his woman, still shrieking out her candid opinion of him.

"Well, I guess that settles it!" Abbott exclaimed.

It did! When my uncle called the men together and gave out the detail of the night watch, not one of them made objection, and never again did they ask for their discharge.

With the setting of the sun, Abbott, Pitamakan, and I went down into the grove to our accustomed place, Abbott at the head of the grove and we at its east side. We fully expected that the Crow war party, repeating the tactics of the Assiniboins, would sneak into the grove during the night with the intention of making a surprise attack upon the men when they resumed work in it in the morning. It was agreed that, if they did come, we were to withdraw without letting them know, if possible, that we had seen them. That would mean, as my uncle remarked with a heavy sigh, that the grove would be given over to the enemy for an indefinite time, during which work on the fort would, of course, be suspended. Pitamakan said that, in his opinion, the war party, having had a good view of Is-spai-u and doubtless believing him to be the wonderful buffalo-runner they had heard about, would be far more likely to try to sneak him out of our camp than they would be to ambush us in the grove.

To our great astonishment the night passed without the Crows appearing either at the grove or at the barricade. We did not know what to think. Was it possible, Abbott asked, that the party was homeward bound to the Crow country across the Yellowstone after an unsuccessful raid north of the Missouri?

"War parties seldom go home on foot," Pitamakan well replied.

As soon as my uncle came into the timber with the men and placed his guards and set the six to work we three watchers returned to the barricade, had breakfast, and turned in for the sleep we so much needed. The day and the following night passed quietly; and when the next day and night passed without our detecting any signs of the Crow war party, we said to one another that it had gone its way without discovering our camp.

The third day after our meeting the Crows came. After watering and picketing the saddle-horses close to the barricade, the men hitched up the teams as usual and came into the grove, and Pitamakan, Abbott, and I went to camp, had our morning meal, and as usual took to our couches. We had not been asleep more than three hours, when Tsistsaki came into the lodge and shook us by turns until we were wide-awake. "Take your gun and hurry out!" she said with suppressed excitement. "Several clumps of sagebrush are moving upon us!"

ABBOTT FIRES INTO A CLUMP OF SAGEBRUSH

"What do you mean? Sagebrush can't move," I said to her.

"Oh, yes, it can when enemies are behind it, pushing it along!" she cried. "Hurry! Follow me and stoop low so that you cannot be seen over the top of the barricade."

Tsistsaki led us to the south side of the barricade, and, lining us up beside her to look through the narrow space between the top log and the one next it, told us to watch the sagebrush beyond the picketed saddle-horses.

They were upon smooth grass. A hundred yards or so farther on were scattering growths of sage and of greasewood, the outer border of a growth that two hundred yards beyond became a solid tract of brush from three to four feet high, which extended a long way up the valley. I noticed at once that here and there with the near growth of short bushes were taller, thicker clumps that seemed to be out of place; and as I looked one of them advanced a foot or two with a gentle quivering of its top.

At the same time Pitamakan exclaimed: "She is right! Sagebrush can move. Behind every one of those tall bushes is an enemy!"

"Sneaking in after Is-spai-u!" I said.

"There are twenty or more of them. If they knew that we are but three guns here, they would rush in upon us in no time!" said Abbott.

"Oh, you talk, talk! Quick! Do something! Save Is-spai-u!" Tsistsaki hoarsely whispered.

"If we rush out there," said Pitamakan, "the enemy will know that they are discovered and will charge in and fight us for the horses. Almost-brother, you and I will wander out there, just as if we were going to water the horses. The enemy will surely think that is our intention, but we will lead them toward the river, then bring them round the north side of the barricade and into it."

"Now, that is a sure wise plan. Go ahead, you two, and meanwhile Tsistsaki and I will get the loud-mouthed gun across to this south-side firing-place," said Abbott.

There was here, as in a number of places round the barricade, a brush-covered space through which the six-pounder could be pointed. The women of the engagés were in their lodges, and Tsistsaki whispered to us that she had not told them of her discovery for fear some of them would make an outcry.

Pitamakan and I sneaked back into the lodge for our blankets and put them on, first, however, sticking our rifles under our belts and pressing them close along the left side and leg; then we walked carelessly out through the passageway of the barricade. We were talking and laughing, but you may be sure our laughter was forced. When we were twenty or thirty feet from the barricade he said to me, "Let us pause here and have a look at the country."

We halted and looked first to the north, then down to the grove, from which both teams were emerging with wagons loaded with logs. There were three engagés with the outfit. I pointed to them. "What would they do if they knew what is ahead of them?"

"They would fly! Their fear would be so great that it would give them power to grow wings instantly!" Pitamakan grimly answered.

Fear! Well, I was afraid, and so was my almost-brother. Who would not be afraid in such a situation—just three of us against twenty or more enemies watching and planning how to get away with our horses and our scalps, too?

We turned to face the south and scrutinized the tall, thick clumps of sagebrush standing among the shorter, scattered growth. They never moved, not so much as a quiver of their slender, pale-green tops.

Pitamakan broke out with a quick-time dance-song of his people and danced a few steps to it as we neared the horses. I sauntered up to Is-spai-u, he to his fast runner, and we unfastened and coiled their ropes. Leading them, we moved on to one after another of the other four horses, ever with watchful eyes upon those clumps of sage, the nearest of which was not more than a hundred yards away. We feared every moment to see them thrown down and the enemy come charging upon us; but at last we had all the horses in lead and with fast-beating hearts and rising hopes started toward the river, never once looking back, much though we wanted to. Pitamakan seemed to know my thought, for he said cheerily: "Never mind; you don't need to look back. If they make a rush, Great Hider and Tsistsaki will shout before they can make two jumps toward us."