The Covered Wagon Part 17

"Died last night. The pilgrims is tryin' to make coffins fer 'em out'n cottonwood logs."

"Lucky for all!" Jackson interrupted the garrulity of the other. "We buried men in blankets on the Vermilion a few days back. The p.a.w.nees got a small camp o' our own folks."

"Yes, I know all about that."

"What's that?" cut in Banion. "How do you know?"

"Well, we've got the survivors--three o' them, countin' Woodhull, their captain."

"How did they get here?"

"They came in with a small outfit o' Mormons that was north o' the Vermilion. They'd come out on the St. Jo road. They told me--"

"Is Woodhull here--can you find him?"

"Sh.o.r.e! Ye want to see him?"

"Yes."

"He told me all about hit--"

"We know all about it, perhaps better than you do--after he's told you all about it."

Bridger looked at him, curious.

"Well, anyhow, hit's over," said he. "One of the men had a p.a.w.nee arrer in his laig. Reckon hit hurt. I know, fer I carried a Blackfoot arrerhead under my shoulder blade fer sever'l years.

"But come on down and help me make these pilgrims set guards. Do-ee mind, now, the hull Sioux nation's just in ahead o' us, other side the river! Yet these people didn't want to ford to the south side the Platte; they wanted to stick north o' the river. Ef we had, we'd have our ha'r dryin' by now. I tell ye, the tribes is out to stop the wagon trains this spring. They say too many womern and children is comin', an'

that shows we want to take their land away fer keeps.

"From now on to Oregon--look out! The Cayuses cleaned out the Whitman mission last spring in Oregon. Even the Shoshones is dancin'. The Crows is out, the Cheyennes is marchin', the Bannocks is east o' the Pa.s.s, an'

ye kain't tell when ter expeck the Blackfoots an' Grow Vaws. Never was gladder to see a man than I am to see Bill Jackson."

"Stretch out!"

Banion gave the order. The Missouri wagons came on, filed through the gap in order and with military exactness wheeled into a perfect park at one side the main caravan.

As the outer columns swung in, the inner spread out till the lapped wagons made a great oblong, Bridger watching them. Quickly the animals were outspanned, the picket ropes put down and the loose horses driven off to feed while the cattle were close herded. He nodded his approval.

"Who's yer train boss, Bill?" he demanded. "That's good work."

"Major Banion, of Doniphan's column in the war."

"Will he fight?"

"Try him!"

News travels fast along a wagon train. Word pa.s.sed now that there was a big Sioux village not far ahead, on the other side of the river, and that the caravan should be ready for a night attack. Men and women from the earlier train came into the Westport camp and the leaders formulated plans. More than four hundred families ate in sight of one another fires that evening.

Again on the still air of the Plains that night rose the bugle summons, by now become familiar. In groups the wagon folk began to a.s.semble at the council fire. They got instructions which left them serious. The camp fell into semi-silence. Each family returned to its own wagon. Out in the dark, flung around in a wide circle, a double watch stood guard.

Wingate and his aids, Banion, Jackson, Bridger, the pick of the hardier men, went out for all the night. It was to Banion, Bridger and Jackson that most attention now was paid. Banion could not yet locate Woodhull in the train.

The scouts crept out ahead of the last picket line, for though an attack in ma.s.s probably would not come before dawn, if the Sioux really should cross the river, some horse stealing or an attempted stampede might be expected before midnight or soon after.

The night wore on. The fires of willow twigs and _bois des vaches_ fell into pale coals, into ashes. The chill of the Plains came, so that the sleepers in the great wagon corral drew their blankets closer about them as they lay.

It was approaching midnight when the silence was ripped apart by the keen crack of a rifle--another and yet another.

Then, in a ripple of red detonation, the rifle fire ran along the upper front of the entire encampment.

"Turn out! Turn out, men!" called the high, clear voice of Banion, riding back. "Barricade! Fill in the wheels!"

CHAPTER XVIII

ARROW AND PLOW

The night attack on the great emigrant encampment was a thing which had been preparing for years. The increasing number of the white men, the lessening numbers of the buffalo, meant inevitable combat with all the tribes sooner or later.

Now the spring hunt of the northern Plains tribes was on. Five hundred lodges of the Sioux stood in one village on the north side of the Platte. The scaffolds were red with meat, everywhere the women were dressing hides and the camp was full of happiness. For a month the great Sioux nation had prospered, according to its lights. Two hundred stolen horses were under the wild herdsmen, and any who liked the meat of the spotted buffalo might kill it close to camp from the scores taken out of the first caravans up the Platte that year--the Mormons and other early trailers whom the Sioux despised because their horses were so few.

But the Sioux, fat with _boudins_ and _depouille_ and marrowbones, had waited long for the great Western train which should have appeared on the north side of the Platte, the emigrant road from the Council Bluffs.

For some days now they had known the reason, as Jim Bridger had explained--the wagons had forded the river below the Big Island. The white men's medicine was strong.

The Sioux did not know of the great rendezvous at the forks of the Great Medicine Road. Their watchmen, stationed daily at the eminences along the river bluffs of the north sh.o.r.e, brought back scoffing word of the carelessness of the whites. When they got ready they, too, would ford the river and take them in. They had not heeded the warning sent down the trail that no more whites should come into this country of the tribes. It was to be war.

And now the smoke signals said yet more whites were coming in from the south! The head men rode out to meet their watchmen. News came back that the entire white nation now had come into the valley from the south and joined the first train.

Here then was the chance to kill off the entire white nation, their women and their children, so there would be none left to come from toward the rising sun! Yes, this would end the race of the whites without doubt or question, because they all were here. After killing these it would be easy to send word west to the Arapahoes and Gros Ventres and Cheyennes, the Crows, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones, the Utes, to follow west on the Medicine Road and wipe out all who had gone on West that year and the year before. Then the Plains and the mountains would all belong to the red men again.

The chiefs knew that the hour just before dawn is when an enemy's heart is like water, when his eyes are heavy, so they did not order the advance at once. But a band of the young men who always fought together, one of the inner secret societies or clans of the tribe, could not wait so long. First come, first served. Daylight would be time to look over the children and to keep those not desired for killing, and to select and distribute the young women of the white nation. But the night would be best for taking the elk-dogs and the spotted buffalo.

Accordingly a band from this clan swam and forded the wide river, crossed the island, and in the early evening came downstream back of a s.h.i.+elding fringe of cottonwoods. Their scouts saw with amazement the village of tepees that moved on wheels. They heard the bugle, saw the white nation gather at the medicine fire, heard them chant their great medicine song; then saw them disperse; saw the fires fall low.

They laughed. The white nation was strong, but they did not put out guards at night! For a week the Sioux had watched them, and they knew about that. It would be easy to run off all the herd and to kill a few whites even now, beginning the sport before the big battle of to-morrow, which was to wipe out the white nation altogether.

But when at length, as the handle of the Great Dipper reached the point agreed, the line of the Sioux clansmen crawled away from the fringe of trees and out into the cover of a little slough that made toward the village of tepees on wheels, a quarter of a mile in front of the village men arose out of the ground and shot into them. Five of their warriors fell. Tall men in the dark came out and counted coup on them, took off their war bonnets; took off even more below the bonnets. And there was a warrior who rode this way and that, on a great black horse, and who had a strange war cry not heard before, and who seemed to have no fear. So said the clan leader when he told the story of the repulse.

Taken aback, the attacking party found cover. But the Sioux would charge three times. So they scattered and crawled in again over a half circle.

They found the wall of tepees solid; found that the white nation knew more of war than they had thought. They sped arrow after arrow, ball after ball, against the circle of the white tepees, but they did not break, and inside no one moved or cried out in terror; whereas outside, in the gra.s.s, men rose up and fired into them and did not run back, but came forward. Some had short rifles in their hands that did not need to be loaded, but kept on shooting. And none of the white nation ran away.

And the elk-dogs with long ears, and the spotted buffalo, were no longer outside the village in the gra.s.s, but inside the village. What men could fight a nation whose warriors were so unfair as all this came to?

The tribesmen drew back to the cottonwoods a half mile.

"My heart is weak," said their clan leader. "I believe they are going to shoot us all. They have killed twenty of us now, and we have not taken a scalp."