Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters Part 27

The third Indian rushed, with a knife. He was only one, but Tom was weak from loss of blood, and other Indians might arrive at any moment.

Ranger Higgins parried with his rifle-barrel, found it too heavy, drew his own knife, and gallantly closed. They locked and swayed and panted and stabbed.

The Indian proved much the stronger, but he had no liking for this knife work. He hurled Tom sprawling, and hastened to a rifle. After all, a bullet was the surest weapon against this kind of a white man.

Up rose Ranger Higgins, once more--gory but not defeated. He was chopped and gashed from head to foot, had three b.a.l.l.s in his thighs and one in another part of his body, and a crippled lower leg. Now he, too, sought for a gun, and hoped that he might load first.

All this amazing lop-sided duel had occupied but little time--just long enough for Joe Burgess to escape into the safety zone of the block-house. The smoky fog had been split by the first beams of the sun, and much of the struggle had taken place in full view of Ranger Higgins' comrades inside the fort gate.

They were six men and one woman--Mrs. Pursley, the wife of Ranger Pursley. What could they few do? Tom! Hurrah for Tom! See! He was still on his feet--he was still at it! The brave fellow! But how could they help him? The main band of Indians were in sight; the block-house, and the wounded lieutenant, must not be left unprotected--

Mrs. Pursley stormed.

"Out with you? Are you men, to let a comrade be butchered?" She appealed to her husband: "Are you a coward, too? Did I marry a coward?"

"We'd save Tom if we could, but the Injuns are ten to one. We don't dare leave."

A cry welled.

"Tom's down again! He's fainted. There's the end to him."

"No, it isn't." Mrs. Pursley tore the gun from her husband's hand.

"The more shame on you, to let a defenceless man lie. But I'll not see so fine a fellow as Tom Higgins lost for lack of a little help."

And before they could stop her she was galloping through the gate and into the prairie.

"After her, boys! That's too much to stand. Never mind the fort."

They raced in pursuit. The one Indian was searching for his gun; the other Indians, coming in, halted, confused. Mrs. Pursley was there first--already on the ground and bending over Ranger Tom, trying to lift him to her saddle. They had no time to waste. One helped her--slung Tom across in front of a saddle; and fighting a rear action they gained the block-house without a wound.

Tom Higgins was the hero, but Mrs. Pursley was the heroine.

Two of his bullets were taken out, and he got well, except for a limp and considerable "botheration" from a third bullet. After the war he made a day's ride to find a doctor and have the ball extracted.

"What's your fee, Doc?"

"It'll be fifty dollars."

"What? Not much, by golly! That's more than half a year's pension.

For less I'll fetch it out, myself."

He wrathfully rode home again; the ball seemed to have worked toward the surface--yes, he could see it, away in.

"Old woman, hand me my razor, will you?" he bade. "And jest put your fingers on this hole and stretch it."

Without a quiver he cut into his thigh, put in his two thumbs, "and,"

he said, "I flirted that ball out as slick as a whistle, at the cost of nary a cent!"

In his later years Veteran Ranger Tom Higgins was a.s.sistant doorkeeper for the Illinois legislature. His st.u.r.dy form and the story of his fight with the three Indians when he covered the escape of Comrade Burgess made him a famous character.

[1] For the story of the Prophet and Tec.u.mseh, see "Boys' Book of Indian Warriors."

CHAPTER XIII

JOHN COLTER'S RACE FOR LIFE (1808)

THE TRAPPER AND THE BLACKFEET

In all the planning for possession of the country north and west of the Ohio River the Indians were far out-stripped by the white men. By the treaty of peace with England, in 1783, at the close of the Revolution, the United States obtained the lands west to the Mississippi River.

When beginning in 1805 the Shawnee Prophet, or Open Door, tried to league the red people together, the Long Knife nation of the Thirteen Fires had extended clear to the Rocky Mountains. There was no stopping them. In the spring of 1803 President Thomas Jefferson, for the United States, had succeeded in buying the great Louisiana Territory from France. This Province of Louisiana covered from the Mississippi to the summits of the Rocky Mountains, and from Texas to Canada.

The messengers sent out by Open Door traveled even to the Blackfeet Indians of present Montana; but messengers sent out by President Jefferson had traveled farther. Starting from near St. Louis, in June, 1804, they had carried the new flag and the new peace word clear up the Missouri River, through Sioux country, through Blackfoot country and through Snake country, and had explored on to the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River in present Washington. They had beaten the Open Door by several years.

These messengers of the United States were true Long Knives: young Captain Meriwether Lewis of Virginia and Lieutenant William Clark, his friend and a brother of the famed General George Rogers Clark, of Kentucky. They were to report upon the nature of the northern Louisiana Purchase, talk friendship with the strange Indians, and find a way by water across the Oregon Country beyond, to the mouth of the Columbia.

They took a company of thirty-one men enlisted as soldiers and boatmen and interpreters. Among them there were nine of the Kentucky Long Hunters. It is said that Lewis Wetzel joined, but he dropped out.

John Colter, of Maysville on the Ohio River at the mouth of Limestone Creek, opposite West Virginia, was another. He went through.

Ten years before, Daniel Boone had moved west, into Louisiana Province while it was owned by Spain. He had settled in central Missouri, on the Missouri River above St. Louis; wanted "elbow room," he said--and the Spanish governor gave him eight thousand five hundred acres of land. Colonel Boone the Big Turtle was the first of the American dead-shots in the new West. When the Lewis and Clark men toiled up-river here he still was, living among the French in the very last white settlement.

He was not to be alone long. Many another Kentuckian and Carolinan and Tennesseean and Virginian had been thinking of a try at Boone's latest hunting-grounds; they remembered that he had made a good choice when he picked Kentucky: and now that the country yonder was being opened by Americans for Americans they pressed after Lewis and Clark--their own kind. There were furs to be found, under American protection, and sold at St. Louis, an American city.

So when in the summer of 1806 the Lewis and Clark men were on the down-river trail, bound for St. Louis again, on the Missouri below the mouth of the Yellowstone River away up in North Dakota they met two American trappers, Forest Hanc.o.c.k and Joseph d.i.c.kson, hailing last from Illinois.

John Colter, of the nine Kentuckians, thought that this was a good chance for him. The two free-trappers had been in here for two years--had set out right on the heels of the exploring party; they had caught many beaver and were doing well. They turned back, for fifty miles, with the company. On the way down John Colter arranged to become their partner. Captain Lewis gave him his discharge; and instead of going home he stayed, to be a trapper.

This land of high bare plains and snow-tipped, rock-ribbed, pine-clad mountains was very different from the forests of the Ohio region; but he had learned a great deal during his two years' trip. He was no greenhorn. He could take care of himself--he had been farther than Hanc.o.c.k and d.i.c.kson, felt no more fear of the Western Indians than he did of the Eastern Indians. After all, an Indian was an Indian, although these plains Indians like the Sioux and Blackfeet numbered thousands and seemed to think themselves much better than the white man.

In the fall his partners went "out," to take their furs to St. Louis.

He remained in, and spent the winter alone, up the Yellowstone River of Montana, which was Blackfoot country. Captain Lewis had had trouble with the Blackfeet. They had tried to rob him, and two had been killed. But the Blackfoot head chief announced that this had served his young men right, and that the other Blackfeet bore the Americans no ill will.

Therefore Trapper Colter pa.s.sed the winter in peace. The Crows, who also claimed the Yellowstone, did not molest him, either. In the spring he was taking the lone trail for St. Louis, when he met a company of American and French fur-hunters under Manuel Lisa, a swarthy Spaniard. They were coming in to build a trading post among the Blackfeet or Crows.

Trapper Colter had reached the mouth of the Platte River, in Nebraska--was almost "home," to the States, after an absence of three years; but he cared little. Trader Lisa wished him to be their scout to the Yellowstone and help them with the Indians; so he promptly turned around and took the back trail. He loved the trapper's life.

They built the post, named Manuel's Fort, beside the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Big Horn River in southeastern Montana. Trader Lisa found out that the Blackfeet were friendly; but their trade was not enough for him. He coveted the furs of the Crows and other Indians. John Colter was the man to carry the word that a trading post had been "brought" to the Yellowstone, and that all Indians were invited to visit it. He set out with the news.

This part of the Yellowstone was really Crow country; they ranged in southern Montana, the Blackfeet ranged in northern Montana, but they fought each other whenever they met in south or north, or in the mountains west. The Blackfeet were the stronger; they were eating the Crows, year after year. Trader Lisa should have known better than to invite them both to trade with him.

John Colter shouldered a pack of thirty pounds weight, containing presents, and with his rifle and ammunition started to hunt the Crows in the southwest. He paddled his canoe up the Big Horn into northern Wyoming, and finally discovered the Crows in their summer quarters of the Wind River Valley, to the westward.

With them he traveled westward still, across the Wind River Mountains and the Teton Mountains into northeastern Idaho. For the first time the eyes of a white American saw this wild and grandly beautiful scenery of a hunter's paradise.

He had traveled by canoe and foot and horse about five hundred miles.