The Covered Wagon Part 18

"I was close," said a young boy whom they called Bull Gets Up or The Sitting Bull. "I was close, and I heard the spotted buffalo running about inside the village; I heard the children. To-morrow we can run them away."

"But to-night what man knows the gate into their village? They have got a new chief to-day. They are many as the gra.s.s leaves. Their medicine is strong. I believe they are going to kill us all if we stay here." Thus the partisan.

So they did not stay there, but went away. And at dawn Banion and Bridger and Jackson and each of the column captains--others also--came into the corral carrying war bonnets, s.h.i.+elds and bows; and some had things which had been once below war bonnets. The young men of this clan always fought on foot or on horse in full regalia of their secret order, day or night. The emigrants had plenty of this savage war gear now.

"We've beat them off," said Bridger, "an' maybe they won't ring us now.

Get the cookin' done, Cap'n Banion, an' let's roll out. But for your wagon park they'd have cleaned us."

The whites had by no means escaped scathless. A dozen arrows stood sunk into the sides of the wagons inside the park, hundreds had thudded into the outer sides, nearest the enemy. One shaft was driven into the hard wood of a plow beam. Eight oxen staggered, legs wide apart, shafts fast in their bodies; four lay dead; two horses also; as many mules.

This was not all. As the fighting men approached the wagons they saw a group of stern-faced women weeping around something which lay covered by a blanket on the ground. Molly Wingate stooped, drew it back to show them. Even Bridger winced.

An arrow, driven by a buffalo bow, had glanced on the spokes of a wheel, risen in its flight and sped entirely across the inclosure of the corral. It had slipped through the canvas cover of a wagon on the opposite side as so much paper and caught fair a woman who was lying there, a nursing baby in her arms, s.h.i.+elding it, as she thought, with her body. But the missile had cut through one of her arms, pierced the head of the child and sunk into the bosom of the mother deep enough to kill her also. The two lay now, the shaft transfixing both; and they were buried there; and they lie there still, somewhere near the Grand Island, in one of a thousand unknown and unmarked graves along the Great Medicine Road. Under the ashes of a fire they left this grave, and drove six hundred wagons over it, and the Indians never knew.

The leaders stood beside the dead woman, hats in hand. This was part of the price of empire--the life of a young woman, a bride of a year.

The wagons all broke camp and went on in a vast caravan, the Missourians now at the front. Noon, and the train did not halt. Banion urged the teamsters. Bridger and Jackson were watching the many signal smokes.

"I'm afeard o' the next bend," said Jackson at length.

The fear was justified. Early in the afternoon they saw the outriders turn and come back to the train at full run. Behind them, riding out from the concealment of a clump of cottonwoods on the near side of the scattering river channels, there appeared rank after rank of the Sioux, more than two thousand warriors bedecked in all the savage finery of their war dress. They were after their revenge. They had left their village and, paralleling the white men's advance, had forded on ahead.

They came out now, five hundred, eight hundred, a thousand, two thousand strong, and the ground shook under the thunder of the hoofs. They were after their revenge, eager to inflict the final blow upon the white nation.

The spot was not ill chosen for their tactics. The alkali plain of the valley swung wide and flat, and the trail crossed it midway, far back from the water and not quite to the flanking sand hills. While a few dashed at the cattle, waving their blankets, the main body, with workman-like precision, strung out and swung wide, circling the train and riding in to arrow range.

The quick orders of Banion and his scouts were obeyed as fully as time allowed. At a gallop, horse and ox transport alike were driven into a hurried park and some at least of the herd animals inclosed. The riflemen flanked the train on the danger side and fired continually at the long string of running horses, whose riders had flung themselves off-side so that only a heel showed above a pony's back, a face under his neck. Even at this range a half dozen ponies stumbled, figures crawled off for cover. The emigrants were stark men with rifles. But the circle went on until, at the running range selected, the crude wagon park was entirely surrounded by a thin racing ring of steel and fire stretched out over two or three miles.

The Sioux had guns also, and though they rested most on the bow, their chance rifle fire was dangerous. As for the arrows, even from this disadvantageous station these peerless bowmen sent them up in a high arc so that they fell inside the inclosure and took their toll. Three men, two women lay wounded at the first ride, and the animals were plunging.

The war chief led his warriors in the circle once more, chanting his own song to the continuous chorus of savage ululations. The entire fighting force of the Sioux village was in the circle.

The ring ran closer. The Sioux were inside seventy-five yards, the dust streaming, the hideously painted faces of the riders showing through, red, saffron, yellow, as one after another warrior tw.a.n.ged a bow under his horse's neck as he ran.

But this was easy range for the steady rifles of men who kneeled and fired with careful aim. Even the six-shooters, then new to the Sioux, could work. Pony after pony fell, until the line showed gaps; whereas now the wagon corral showed no gap at all, while through the wheels, and over the tongue s.p.a.ces, from every crevice of the gray towering wall came the fire of more and more men. The medicine of the white men was strong.

Three times the ring pa.s.sed, and that was all. The third circuit was wide and ragged. The riders dared not come close enough to carry off their dead and wounded. Then the attack dwindled, the savages scattering and breaking back to the cover of the stream.

"Now, men, come on!" called out Banion. "Ride them down! Give them a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g they'll remember! Come on, boys!"

Within a half hour fifty more Sioux were down, dead or very soon to die.

Of the living not one remained in sight.

"They wanted hit, an' they got hit!" exclaimed Bridger, when at length he rode back, four war bonnets across his saddle and scalps at his cantle. He raised his voice in a fierce yell of triumph, not much other than savage himself, dismounted and disdainfully cast his trophies across a wagon tongue.

"I've et horse an' mule an' dog," said he, "an' wolf, wil'cat an'

skunk, an' perrairy dog an' snake an' most ever'thing else that wears a hide, but I never could eat Sioux. But to-morrer we'll have ribs in camp. I've seed the buffler, an' we own this side the river now."

Molly Wingate sat on a bed roll near by, knitting as calmly as though at home, but filled with wrath.

"Them nasty, dirty critters!" she exclaimed. "I wish't the boys had killed them all. Even in daylight they don't stand up and fight fair like men. I lost a whole churnin' yesterday. Besides, they killed my best cow this mornin', that's what they done. And lookit this thing!"

She held up an Indian arrow, its strap-iron head bent over at right angles. "They shot this into our plow beam. Looks like they got a spite at our plow."

"Ma'am, they have got a spite at hit," said the old scout, seating himself on the ground near by. "They're scared o' hit. I've seed a bunch o' Sioux out at Laramie with a plow some Mormon left around when he died. They'd walk around and around that thing by the hour, talkin' low to theirselves. They couldn't figger hit out no ways a-tall.

"That season they sent a runner down to the p.a.w.nees to make a peace talk, an' to find out what this yere thing was the whites had brung out.

p.a.w.nees sent to the Otoes, an' the Otoes told them. They said hit was the white man's big medicine, an' that hit buried all the buffler under the ground wherever hit come, so no buffler ever could git out again.

Nacherl, when the runners come back an' told what that thing really was, all the Injuns, every tribe, said if the white man was goin' to bury the buffler the white man had got to stay back.

"Us trappers an' traders got along purty well with the Injuns--they could get things they wanted at the posts or the Rendyvous, an' that was all right. They had pelts to sell. But now these movers didn't buy nothin' an' didn't sell nothin'. They just went on through, a-carryin'

this thing for buryin' the buffler. From now on the Injuns is goin' to fight the whites. Ye kain't blame 'em, ma'am; they only see their finish.

"Five years ago nigh a thousand whites drops down in Oregon. Next year come fifteen hundred, an' in '45 twicet that many, an' so it has went, doublin, an' doublin'. Six or seven thousand whites go up the Platte this season, an' a right smart sprinklin' o' them'll git through to Oregon. Them 'at does'll carry plows.

"Ma'am, if the brave that sunk a arrer in yore plow beam didn't kill yore plow hit warn't because he didn't want to. Hit's the truth--the plow does bury the buffler, an' fer keeps! Ye kain't kill a plow, ner neither kin yer scare hit away. Hit's the holdin'est thing ther is, ma'am--hit never does let go."

"How long'll we wait here?" the older woman demanded.

"Anyhow fer two-three days, ma'am. Thar's a lot has got to sort put stuff an' throw hit away here. One man has drug a pair o' millstones all the way to here from Ohio. He allowed to get rich startin' a gris'mill out in Oregon. An' then ther's chairs an' tables, an' G.o.d knows what--"

"Well, anyhow," broke in Mrs. Wingate truculently, "no difference what you men say, I ain't going to leave my bureau, nor my table, nor my chairs! I'm going to keep my two churns and my feather bed too. We've had b.u.t.ter all the way so far, and I mean to have it all the way--and eggs. I mean to sleep at nights, too, if the pesky muskeeters'll let me.

They most have et me up. And I'd give a dollar for a drink of real water now. It's all right to settle this water overnight, but that don't take the sody out of it.

"Besides," she went on, "I got four quarts o' seed wheat in one of them bureau drawers, and six cuttings of my best rose-bush I'm taking out to plant in Oregon. And I got three pairs of Jed's socks in another bureau drawer. It's flat on its back, bottom of the load. I ain't going to dig it out for no man."

"Well, hang on to them socks, ma'am. I've wintered many a time without none--only gra.s.s in my moccasins. There's outfits in this train that's low on flour an' side meat right now, let alone socks. We got to cure some meat. There's a million buffler just south in the breaks wantin' to move on north, but scared of us an' the Injuns. We'd orto make a good hunt inside o' ten mile to-morrer. We'll git enough meat to take us a week to jerk hit all, or else Jim Bridger's a liar--which no one never has said yit, ma'am."

"Flowers?" he added. "You takin' flowers acrost? Flowers--do they go with the plow, too, as well as weeds? Well, well! Wimminfolks sh.o.r.e air a strange race o' people, hain't that the truth? Buryin' the buffler an'

plantin' flowers on his grave!

"But speakin' o' buryin' things," he suddenly resumed, "an' speakin' o'

plows, 'minds me o' what's delayin' us all right now. Hit's a fool thing, too--buryin' Injuns!"

"As which, Mr. Bridger? What you mean?" inquired Molly Wingate, looking over her spectacles.

"This new man, Banion, that come in with the Missouri wagons--he taken hit on hisself to say, atter the fight was over, we orto stop an' bury all them Injuns! Well, I been on the Plains an' in the Rockies all my life, an' I never yit, before now, seed a Injun buried. Hit's onnatcherl. But this here man he, now, orders a ditch plowed an' them Injuns hauled in an' planted. Hit's wastin' time. That's what's keepin'

him an' yore folks an' sever'l others. Yore husband an' yore son is both out yan with him. Hit beats h.e.l.l, ma'am, these new-fangled ways!"

"So that's where they are? I wanted them to fetch me something to make a fire."

"I kain't do that, ma'am. Mostly my squaws--"

"Your what? Do you mean to tell me you got squaws, you old heathen?"

"Not many, ma'am--only two. Times is hard sence beaver went down. I kain't tell ye how hard this here depressin' has set on us folks out here."

"Two squaws! My laws! Two--what's their names?" This last with feminine curiosity.