Part 6

“If head chief he not tell dat raven soldier to let go mast, he hang on till cut in leetle pieces,” was saying Cruzatte.

In the morning the boats were moved up to the village, and Captain Lewis went ashore. Truly, the Red Head and the slim Captain Lewis were brave men. Peter was proud to have been by Captain Clark’s side, in the fracas. It was fine to be a United States.

When Captain Lewis returned on board, he told Captain Clark that everything was all right, and that the Tetons were waiting for the Red Head.

“You’re a bigger man than I am, Will, after the stand you made yesterday,” he laughed.

And it seemed to be that way, for when Captain Clark landed he was met by ten young warriors, with a gaily decorated buffalo robe. They carried him upon it, and then bore him, sitting in it, to the council house. This was great honor.

“You’re nixt, Cap’n,” ventured Patrick Gass. “There they are, back for ye, sorr.”

“Be alert, Sergeant,” bade the captain, as he vaulted from the barge into the pirogue. “They may appear friendly, but we mustn’t take any chances. Don’t let the men lay aside their arms for a minute, and keep them together.”

“Yis, sorr. I will, sorr,” promised Patrick Gass. He was the oldest soldier in the company, and the captains relied upon him.

Captain Lewis likewise was borne to the council house; and the men of the expedition, except the boat guards, marched after.

The council lasted a long time, and was concluded with a feast of the dog-meat from a pot, and of buffalo meat and hominy and ground-potato. Buffalo meat was given to the white chiefs as a present. The Tetons claimed to be poor, but they weren’t. This was a powerful and rich village, as anybody might see. Before the dance that had been planned for the evening, the men were permitted to roam about a little. Peter and Patrick Gass and their party discovered a string of scalps hanging from a pole, and a number of Omaha squaws and children who appeared very miserable.

Peter talked with them a little. They were prisoners. The Tetons had attacked their village down the river, and had burned forty lodges and killed seventy-five warriors.

When dusk fell the dance was started, by the light of a fire, in the middle of the council house. The Sioux warriors danced, and the Sioux women danced; but at midnight the captains told the chief that everybody was tired and it was time to go to bed.

“The chief he say: ‘Ver’ well. Now sleep. To-morrow more Sioux come, to talk with de great father.’ He want you to stay,” interpreted Drouillard.

“We will stay and see these other Sioux,” answered Captain Lewis. “What do you think, Will?”

“If you say so, Merne,” replied Captain Clark. “But there’s some trick in this. We mustn’t be caught off guard――and of course we mustn’t show that we’re afraid, either.”

But no visiting Sioux turned up, although the boats waited all day. At night another dance was given.

“We in bad feex,” asserted One-eyed Cruzatte. “Dose Teton, dey keep us. I t’ink dey plan mischief. I wish we go on.”

Everybody was nervous.

“Now I wonder if we’re in for a fight,” spoke Corporal Warfington.

“Sure,” said Patrick Gass, “we can lick ’em.”

Amidst the dusk ashore, while Peter, tired of the noise and dancing, was wandering a few steps, a low voice hailed him, in Oto.

“Hist! You Oto?” It was one of the Omaha squaws. How could she have guessed that he had been an Oto?

“No. White,” responded Peter.

“Tell your chiefs the Sioux are bad. They will not let the big boats go. They play you a trick.”

“I will tell,” responded Peter. “You speak Oto well.”

“I am Omaha, but I was in Oto village once. I saw you.” And the squaw vanished.

VI

THE CAPTAINS SHOW THEIR SPUNK

Peter believed that the Omaha woman spoke the truth. The captains ought to be told at once. But the dancing was still in progress in the lodge of Chief Black Buffalo, where sat the two captains and the chiefs, watching. A boy would not be admitted. So Peter sought out Sergeant John Ordway, who was in charge of the shore guard. John Ordway was not from Kentucky; he was from a place called New Hampshire, in the northeast of the United States.

“You don’t say!” replied John Ordway, when Peter had told him of the warning from the Omaha woman. “Well, anybody might suspect as much. I’ll get word to the captains, first chance.”

The dancing continued until late, again. Peter curled in the bows of the waiting pirogue, and went to sleep. He had done his duty and could trust to John Ordway. By the stars it was midnight when he awakened at the approach of the captains. They and two Indian guests and the guard clambered in, and the pirogue was rowed for the barge.

The shore was silent and dark――but how alert were those Sioux! The pirogue ran against the anchor cable of the barge, in the darkness, and broke it. The barge was adrift. The captains cried loudly, ordering the oars to be manned and the barge held until a cable could be passed ashore――and instantly the two Indians in the pirogue shouted excitedly, in the Sioux tongue, summoning the village.

“Here! Quick!” they called. “To the boats! Come!”

The whole village burst into an uproar; the warriors poured forth to the water’s edge. It was very plain that they feared the white men were leaving. The captains could pay little attention until a cable had been carried from the barge and fastened to a tree on the bank, and the barge pulled in out of the current. Then――――

“Ask Tor-to-hon-ga what’s the meaning of all this alarm,” bade Captain Lewis, tersely, of Drouillard. Tor-to-hon-ga was one of the two guests.

“He say de Tetons ’fraid de ’Maha warriors haf come up an’ attack de boats of de great white father,” interpreted Drouillard.

“Nonsense!” muttered Captain Lewis.

And anybody might see how foolish was this excuse of the Tetons: that the Omahas would attack boats defended by guns, when the Sioux were the real enemies. After the village was quiet again, at least sixty Teton warriors remained there on the bank, all night, ready for action.

“I t’ink,” commented Drouillard, “mebbe we have leetle trouble, in mornin’.”

“We’re in a bad box,” quoth Sergeant Ordway. “Now we’re tied up close to the bank, under direct fire. We may have a hard time casting off.”

Strong guards were kept under arms, on all the boats. There was little sleep. Both captains were constantly about, peering through the darkness, and listening. Early in the morning the Tetons were assembled; and while Patrick Gass and a detail were dragging from a pirogue, trying to find the barge’s anchor, several chiefs and warriors waded out to the barge and climbed aboard.

The anchor could not be found.

“Never mind,” said Captain Lewis. “We’ll go on without it. Send those fellows ashore, Will. Sergeant Pryor, take a squad with you and cast off that rope.”

The Indian visitors did not wish to go ashore, but Captain Clark ordered them pushed into the pirogue which was to bear Sergeant Pryor and squad. Chief Black Buffalo still refused to go. Sergeant Pryor released the rope from the tree on the bank and returned. The sail on the barge was being hoisted――and at the instant laughter and shouts mingled, both ashore and from the boats.

A number of the Sioux had sat upon the rope, holding it!

Captain Lewis flared into hot rage.

“Take charge of the pirogues, Will,” he ordered. “Down behind the gunwale, men. Advance your rifles. See that the priming’s fresh, Ordway and Gass. Stand to your swivel, Willard!” And, to Chief Black Buffalo: “My young men are ready for battle. If your young men do not release the rope we will fire.”

“He say de young men want leetle more tobac’,” translated Drouillard.

“Tell him we have given all the presents that we’re going to give,” crisply answered Captain Lewis. “No――wait. Here!” And snatching a roll of tobacco, Captain Lewis threw it at Black Buffalo’s feet. “Tell him there is his tobacco, on the prairie. He says he is a great chief. Among the white men great chiefs are obeyed. If he is a great chief let him order his young men to release that rope and they will obey him. But we do not believe he is a great chief. He is a squaw, and the young men laugh at him.”

“Wah!” grunted Chief Black Buffalo, when he heard. He seized the tobacco and leaped from the boat, to surge for the shore. There he tumbled his young men right and left, snatched the rope and hurled it out into the water.

“Go,” he bawled. Thus he proved himself to be the great chief.

The soldiers cheered. The barge’s sail caught the breeze, the barge moved. Just in time Captain Clark leaped from the pirogue, into which he had transferred, and gained the gunwale, and the deck.

“Well done, Merne,” he panted.

“Golly!” babbled York. “Dat chief mighty brash when he get started.”

The barge and the pirogues gained the middle of the river. Rapidly the Teton village was left behind. Patrick Gass waved his hat derisively.

“Bad luck to yez,” he said. “Sure, an’ if we’d stayed a minute longer we’d ha’ put your town into mournin’. We’re not so paceful as we look.” And he added: “The ’Rikaras nixt. We’ll hope they be gintlemen. Annyhow, we’ve no horses left for ’em to stale.”

Just what was to be expected from the Arikaras nobody might say, but although they were warlike they were thought to be not so mean as the Teton Sioux. The boats forged on, and the month changed to that of October.

“How far to the ’Rikara villages, sir?” asked Captain Lewis, of a trader named Valle who came aboard the barge for a talk.

“By river about 100 miles, captain.”

From an excursion ashore with Captain Clark and squad, York returned tremendously excited.

“We done found one o’ dem white b’ars,” proclaimed York. “Yessuh, me an’ Marse Will. Oof!”

“Where’bouts, York?”

“Whar’s his scalp?”

“Did you get a shot at him?”

Questions were volleyed thick and fast. York wagged his woolly head and rolled his eyes.

“Nossuh. Didn’t get no shot at him. We des seen his track, in dem bushes yonduh near de mout’ ob de ribber. Oof! Marse Will he set his moccasin cl’ar inside, an’ dat track it stuck out all ’round. ’Spec’ dis chile ain’t got bus’ness wif dem critters. Oof!”

“Yes,” agreed George Shannon. “According to Drouillard even the Indians won’t tackle one of those white bears, except in a crowd of six or eight. And if they don’t shoot him through the head or heart he’s liable to out-fight them all. Before they go after him they make big medicine, same as if they were going to war with a whole nation.”

“He’s ’special fond of black meat, too, I hear tell,” slyly remarked John Thompson.

York rolled his eyes, and muttered. But the Kentuckians, some of whom had hunted with Daniel Boone, fingered their rifles eagerly and surveyed the low country at the mouth of the river, as if hoping to see York’s monster stirring.

The next day the first Arikara Indians came aboard, from their lower village. Captain Lewis went with some of them to return the visit. He was accompanied back by Mr. Tabeau and Mr. Gravelines, two French traders who lived with the Arikaras. Mr. Gravelines spoke the Arikara language.

There were three Arikara villages, so that the captains ordered camp made on the north side of the river, across from the villages.

The Arikaras were tall, handsome people――much superior, thought Patrick Gass and the rest of the men, to the Sioux. Chiefs Ka-ka-wis-sas-sa or Lighting Crow, Fo-cas-se or Hay, and Pi-a-he-to or Eagle’s Feather, were introduced by Mr. Gravelines, and the camp soon filled with the Arikara warriors, and even squaws who rowed across in little skin boats of a single buffalo hide stretched over basket-work.

York held a regular reception, for he appeared to astonish the Arikaras as much as he had astonished the Sioux.

“Hey, Marse Tabeau,” he called, to the French trader. “Des tell dese people I’se bohn wil’, an’ my young marster done ketched me when I was runnin’ in de timber an’ tamed me. Tell ’em I used to eat peoples bones an’ all. I’se a sorter g’riller.” And thereupon York seized a thick stick, and snapped it in his two hands, and howled and gritted his teeth. He was very strong, was York.

“Huh!” grunted the Arikaras, respectfully falling back from him.

“That will do, York,” cautioned Captain Clark, trying not to laugh.

But York, of much importance, thoroughly enjoyed himself.

The Arikaras were splendid entertainers and exceedingly hospitable――“’Mos’ like white folks,” asserted York. They did not beg, as the Sioux had begged; they gave lavishly out of their store of corn and beans and dried squashes, and accepted thankfully the gifts from the great father; they would not drink any whisky――“We are surprised that the great father should send us liquor to make fools of us,” said Chief Lighting Crow. Their houses were built close together, of a willow frame plastered with mud, and were entered through a covered passage-way that kept out the wind. Around each village was a fence of close upright pickets, for defense. They were well armed, too, with guns.

When it came time, after the councils had been held, to leave the friendly Arikaras, all the men of the expedition hated to go. John Newman, who had enlisted at St. Louis, was the most out-spoken.

“Look here,” he uttered, boldly, among his comrades at the last camp fire. “Why should we go on, up to those Mandans? Why can’t we spend the winter where we are? The Mandan village is nigh on 200 miles yet, and I’m tired of working my hands raw in this cold weather, hauling the boats over sand-bars.”

“Orders be orders,” reminded Patrick Gass. “An’ up to the Mandans we go, I’m thinkin’.”

“Not if we show a little spunk and say we want to stay,” retorted John.

“Whisht, now!” cautioned Patrick. “Would ye spoil a good record? Faith,” he added, “if the captain heard ye he’ll have ye on the carpet for mutiny, b’gorry.” Captain Clark had strode hastily by, wrapped in his cloak. “It’s mutiny ye’re talkin’,” scolded Patrick Gass. “An’ I want no more of it.”

Captain Clark had heard, for at breaking camp in the morning, John was placed under arrest and confined in the forecastle aboard the barge.

That night, at camp, twenty-five miles above the Arikara villages, a court-martial was held on the case of John Newman. He was found guilty of mutinous speech and sentenced to received seventy-five lashes, and be suspended from the company. The next noon the boats stopped in the rain, at a sand-bar in the middle of the river, everybody was ordered out, and John was roundly whipped on the naked back with ramrods and switches.

Chief Ah-ke-tah-na-sha of the Arikaras, who was going with the expedition up to the Mandans, to make peace between the Mandans and the Arikaras, squatted on the sand-bar, to watch. Evidently he did not understand, for he began to weep.

“Why does Ah-ke-tah-na-sha cry?” asked Captain Clark.

Ah-ke-tah-na-sha, who could speak some Sioux, explained to Drouillard, and Drouillard explained to the captains.

“He say de ’Rikara dey punish by death, but dey never whip even de children. He weep for Newman.”

“Tell him what the matter is, and that this is the white man’s way of punishing disobedience,” directed Captain Clark, to Drouillard.

Drouillard did; and reported.

“He say mebbe so, but ’mong Injuns to whip men make women of dem. If dees is white man way, all right. Men ought to obey deir chiefs.”

“Now aren’t ye ’shamed o’ yourself, when even an Injun cries over ye?” reproved Patrick Gass, of John Newman, who was painfully donning his shirt and coat.

“Well, I am,” admitted John. “I guess I deserved what I got. I don’t harbor any grudge, and I’ll do my duty.”

VII

SNUG IN WINTER QUARTERS

The weather had grown much colder, with squalls of snow and sleet and high winds; the wild geese were flying high, headed into the south; and the river, falling rapidly, was split with bars and narrow channels, when, two weeks after the punishment of John Newman, the barge and the two pirogues anchored off the first of the Mandan villages, in the centre of present North Dakota.

“Five long months we’ve been travelin’, an’ for sixteen hundred crooked miles,” quoth Patrick Gass. “Sure we desarve a bit o’ rist. Now what will the Mandans say, I wonder?”

“Did you see that young fellow who’d lost the halves of two fingers?” queried George Shannon. “Well, he’d cut ’em off, on purpose, because some of his relatives had died! That’s the Mandan way of going into mourning.”

“’Twould be better to cut the hair, I’m thinkin’,” said Pat. “They most of ’em nade it――an’ hair’ll grow again.”

The Mandans had swarmed aboard, and were examining every object with much curiosity. They were an odd people, wrinkled and of low stature――many of the women with brown hair, but others with gray hair which flared almost to the ground. However, their voices were gentle, and they brought gifts of corn and vegetables, in earthen jars.

Mr. Jessaume, a French trader among them, also came aboard; so did a Scotchman named Hugh McCracken, from a British fur company post far north.

“They’re frindly, be they, Pierre?” asked Pat, of One-eyed Cruzatte, who was hobbling past after a lively conversation with Mr. Jessaume.

“Oui,” answered Cruzatte, with a grimace of pain. “I t’ink we stay an’ spen’ one winter. Dey glad. We protect’ dem ’gainst de Sioux. My poor leg, he carry me not furder, anyway.”

For Cruzatte had the rheumatism in both knees. Reuben Fields was laid up with the rheumatism in his neck; and Captain Clark had been so bothered with a stiff neck that he could not move around until Captain Lewis had applied a hot stone wrapped in red flannel.

“Hi!” cackled big York, strutting as usual. “Dese heah Mandans done gif me name Great Medicine, Mistuh McCracken say. Dey wants me foh a chief.”

“There’s coal in the banks, yonder,” spoke George Shannon. “See it, Peter?”

“What is coal?” ventured Peter.

“Black stuff, like a rock, that will burn.”

“It’ll make fine fuel for my forge,” put in John Shields, who was clever at fashioning things out of metal. “Expect I’ll be busy all winter, smithing, while you other fellows are hunting and dancing.”

The Mandan villages were three in number. There was a village of Minnetarees, also; and a village of Ar-wa-cah-was and Ah-na-ha-ways――Indians whom neither Drouillard nor Cruzatte knew.

“Ah, well, now, belike there be plenty Injuns on ahead, too, that ye never heard of,” declared Pat. “Yis, an’ lots of other cur’osities before we get to the Paycific Ocean.”

The head chief of all the Mandans was Pos-cap-sa-he, or Black Cat. The chief of the lowest village was Sha-ha-ka, or Big White. The chief of the second village was Raven Man. The chief of the Ar-wa-cah-was was White Buffalo Robe. The chief of the Ah-na-ha-ways was Cherry-on-a-Bush, or Little Cherry, but he was very old. The chief of the Minnetaree village was Black Moccasin. And the chief of the upper Mandan village, across from the Minnetaree village, was Red Shield.

The two captains met in council with all the villages together, and smoked the pipe of peace and distributed gifts. During the speeches old Cherry-on-a-Bush, the Ah-na-ha-way chief, rose to go, because, he said, his son was on the war-trail against the Sho-sho-nes, or Snakes, and his village was liable to be attacked.

“Shame on you, for an impolite old man,” rebuked Sha-ha-ka, Big White. “Do you not know better than to show such bad manners before the chiefs from the great white father?”

And poor Cherry-on-a-Bush sat down mumbling.

The Arikara chief who had come up on the barge was well received. The Mandans promised to observe peace between the two nations.

“We did not begin the war,” they said. “We have been killing those ’Rees like we kill birds, until we are tired of killing. Now we will send a chief to them, with this chief of theirs, and they can smoke peace.”

Camp was made at a spot picked out by Captain Clark, across the river, below the first Mandan village, and everybody not on guard duty was set at work erecting winter quarters. Captain Clark had charge of the camp, but Patrick Gass “bossed” the work. He was a carpenter. Axes rang, trees were felled and under Patrick’s direction were trimmed and notched, to form the walls and roofs of the cabins.

There were to be two rows of cabins, joined so as to make four rooms, below, on each side, and four rooms above, entered by ladders. The walls were of hewn logs tightly chinked with clay; and the ceilings, seven feet high, were of planks trimmed with adzes――and covered with grass and clay to make a warm floor for the lofts. The roofs slanted inward, which made the outside of the rows eighteen feet high, so that nobody could climb over. Every down-stairs room had a fire-place, and a plank floor. The two rows met, at one end, and were open at the other; and across this opening was to be stretched a high fence of close, thick pickets, entered by a stout gate.

The Mandans and their Indian friends marveled much at the skill of the white men, and at the strength of York, the Great Medicine. They admitted that these white men’s houses were better even than the Mandan lodges――although the Mandan lodges were also of heavy timbers, plastered with earth, and banked with earth at the bottoms; had doors of buffalo hide, and fireplaces in the middle.

Mr. Jessaume, the French trader, moved to the camp, with his Mandan wife and child; and so did another French trader named Toussaint Chaboneau. He had two wives: one was very old and ugly, but the other was young and handsome. She was a Sho-sho-ne girl, from far-off. The Minnetaree Indians had attacked her people and taken her captive, and Chaboneau had bought her as his wife. She and the old wife did not get along together very well.

Mr. Jessaume and Chaboneau could speak the languages, and were hired by the captains to be interpreters for the camp.

“My young wife come from ze Rock mountains,” said Chaboneau――who was a dark little man, his wrinkled face like smoked leather. “One time I was dere. I trade with Minnetaree.”

“You never were over the mountains, Toussaint, were you?” asked Sergeant Pryor.

“Me, Monsieur Sergeant?” And Toussaint shuddered. “Ma foi (my word), no! It is not ze possible. Up dere, no meat, no grass, no trail, notting but rock, ice, cold, an’ ze terrible savages out for ze scalp.”

The cabins were erected rapidly, for the cottonwood logs were soft and easily split. The first trees were felled on November 3, and on November 20 the walls were all in place. The men moved in before the roofs were put on, but buffalo hides were stretched over.

The two captains occupied one cabin, at the head of the angle. And six or seven men were assigned to each of the other cabins. Sergeant Patrick Gass, Privates George Shannon, Reuben Fields and Joseph Fields, who were great hunters, George Gibson, who played the violin, John Newman, who now was no longer mutinous, but worked with a will, and Peter formed one mess; Corporal Warfington and his six soldiers from St. Louis formed another; Drouillard, the hunter, and five of the French boatmen another; One-eyed Cruzatte and five other boatmen another; and so forth. Jessaume and Chaboneau had erected their own lodges.

It was high time that the cabins were completed. The weather turned very cold and windy, and ice floated in the river. The roofs were hastened, and the picket fence ought to be erected soon, for the Mandans were not yet satisfied with the presence of the white men.

Black Cat and Big White were frequent visitors. One day after Black Cat had spent the whole morning talking with the captains, Chaboneau reported the bad news.

“Mebbe now dere is troubles,” he uttered, as he sat toasting his shins at the fire in the Patrick Gass cabin. He had entered with a gay “Bon soir (good evening), messieurs,” and had brought a draft of icy air with him. “Mebbe now dere is troubles.”

“What’s the matter, Toussaint?”