Lords of the North Part 28

Arming myself, I resolved to be among the bargain-makers of the Mandanes rather than be bargained by the Sioux. Wakening Little Fellow, I told him my plan and ordered him to slip away north while the two tribes were parleying and to await me a day's march from the Sioux camp. He told me of a wooded valley, where he could rest with his horses concealed, and after seeing him off, I rode straight for the band of a.s.sembled Mandanes and surprised them beyond all measure by taking a place in the forefront of Black Cat's special guard. The Sioux warriors swept towards us in a tornado. Ascending the slope at a gallop, whooping and beating their drums, they charged past us, and down at full speed through the village, displaying a thousand dexterities of horsemanship and prowess to strike terror to the Mandanes. Then they dashed back and reined up on the hillside beneath our forces. The men were naked to the waist and their faces were blackened. Porcupine quills, beavers' claws, hooked bones, and bears' claws stained red hung round their necks in ringlets, or adorned gorgeous belts. Feathered crests and broad-shielded mats of willow switches, on the left arm, completed their war dress. The leaders had their buckskin leggings strung from hip to ankle with small bells, and carried firearms, as well as arrows and stone lances; but the majority had only Indian weapons. In that respect--though we were not one third their number--we had the advantage. All the Mandanes carried firearms; but I do not believe there was enough ammunition to average five rounds a man. Luckily, this was unknown to the Sioux. I scanned every face. Diable was not there.

Scarcely were the ranks in position, when both Sioux and Mandane chiefs rode forward, and there opened such a harangue as I have never heard since, and hope I never may.

"Our young man has been killed," lamented the Sioux. "He was a good warrior. His friends sorrow. Our hearts are no longer glad. Till now our hands have been white, and our hearts clean. But the young man has been slain and we are grieved. Of the scalps of the enemy, he brought many.

We hang our heads. The pipe of peace has not been in our council. The whites are our enemies. Now, the young man is dead. Tell us if we are to be friends or enemies. We have no fear. We are many and strong. Our bows are good. Our arrows are pointed with flint and our lances with stone. Our shot-pouches are not light. But we love peace. Tell us, what doth the Mandane offer for the blood of the young man? Is it to be peace or war? Shall we be friends or enemies? Do you raise the tomahawk, or pipe of peace? Say, great chief of the Mandanes, what is thy answer?"

This and more did the Sioux chief vauntingly declaim, brandishing his war club and addressing the four points of the compa.s.s, also the sun, as he shouted out his defiance. To which Black Cat, in louder voice, made reply.

"Say, great chief of the Sioux, our dead was brought into the camp. The body was yet warm. It was thrown at our feet. Never before did it enter the heart of a Missouri to seek the blood of a Sioux! Our messengers went to your camp smoking the sacred calumet of peace. They were sons of the Mandanes. They were friends of the white men. The white man is like magic. He comes from afar. He knows much. He has given guns to our warriors. His shot bags are full and his guns many. But his men, ye slew. We are for peace, but if ye are for war, we warn you to leave our camp before the warriors hidden where ye see them not, break forth. We cannot answer for the white man's magic," and I heard my power over darkness and light, life and death, magnified in a way to terrify my own dreams; but Black Cat cunningly wound up his bold declamation by asking what the Sioux chief would have of the white man for the death of the messenger.

A clamor of voices arose from the warriors, each claiming some relationship and attributing extravagant virtues to the dead Sioux.

"I am the afflicted father of the youth ye killed," called an old warrior, putting in prior claim for any forthcoming compensation and enhancing its value by adding, "and he had many feathers in his cap."

"He, who was killed, I desired for a nephew," shouted another, "and an ivory wand he carried in his hand."

"He who was killed was my brother," cried a third, "and he had a new gun and much powder."

"He was braver than the buffalo," declared another.

"He had three wounds!" "He had scars!" "He wore many scalps!" came the voices of others.

"Many bells and beads were on his leggings!"

"He had garnished moccasins!"

"He slew a bear with his own hands!"

"His knife had a handle of ivory!"

"His arrows had barbs of beavers' claws!"

If the noisy claimants kept on, they would presently make the dead man a G.o.d. I begged Black Cat to cut the parley short and demand exactly what gift would compensate the Sioux for the loss of so great a warrior.

After another half-hour's jangling, in which I took an animated part, beating down their exorbitant request for two hundred guns with beads and bells enough to outfit the whole Sioux tribe, we came to terms.

Indeed, the grasping rascals well-nigh cleared out all that was left of my trading stock; but when I saw they had no intention of fighting, I held back at the last and demanded the surrender of Le Grand Diable, Miriam and the child in compensation for La Robe Noire.

Then, they swore by everything, from the sun and the moon to the cow in the meadow, that they were not responsible for the doings of Le Grand Diable, who was an Iroquois. Moreover, they vowed he had hurriedly taken his departure for the north four days before, carrying with him the Sioux wife, the strange woman and the white child. As I had no object in arousing their resentment, I heard their words without voicing my own suspicions and giving over the booty, whiffed pipes with them. But I had no intention of being tricked by the rascally Sioux, and while they and the Mandanes celebrated the peace treaty, I saddled my horse and spurred off for their encampment, glad to see the last of a region where I had suffered much and gained nothing.

CHAPTER XVIII

LAPLANTE AND I RENEW ACQUAINTANCE

The warriors had spoken truth to the Mandanes. Le Grand Diable was not in the Sioux lodges. I had been at the encampment for almost a week, daily expecting the warriors' return, before I could persuade the people to grant me the right of search through the wigwams. In the end, I succeeded only through artifice. Indeed, I was becoming too proficient in craft for the maintenance of self-respect. A child--I explained to the surly old men who barred my way--had been confused with the Sioux slaves. If it were among their lodges, I was willing to pay well for its redemption. The old squaws, eying me distrustfully, averred I had come to steal one of their naked brats, who swarmed on my tracks with as tantalizing persistence as the vicious dogs. The jealous mothers would not hear of my searching the tents. Then I was compelled to make friends with the bevies of young squaws, who ogle newcomers to the Indian camps.

Presently, I gained the run of all the lodges. Indeed, I needed not a little diplomacy to keep from being adopted as son-in-law by one pertinacious old fellow--a kind of embarra.s.sment not wholly confined to trappers in the wilds. But not a trace of Diable and his captives did I find.

I had hobbled my horses--a string of six--in a valley some distance from the camp and directly on the trail, where Little Fellow was awaiting me.

Returning from a look at their condition one evening, I heard a band of hunters had come from the Upper Missouri. I was sitting with a group of men squatted before my fatherly Indian's lodge, when somebody walked up behind us and gave a long, low whistle.

"Mon Dieu! Mine frien', the enemy! Sacredie! 'Tis he! Thou c.o.c.k-brained idiot! Ho--ho! Alone among the Sioux!" came the astonished, half-breathless exclamation of Louis Laplante, mixing his English and French as he was wont, when off guard.

Need I say the voice brought me to my feet at one leap? Well I remembered how I had left him lying with a snarl between his teeth in the doorway of Fort Douglas! Now was his chance to score off that grudge! I should not have been surprised if he had paid me with a stab in the back.

"What for--come you--here?" he slowly demanded, facing me with a revengeful gleam in his eyes. His English was still mixed. There was none of the usual light and airy impudence of his manner.

"You know very well, Louis," I returned without quailing. "Who should know better than you? For the sake of the old days, Louis, help to undo the wrong you allowed? Help me and before Heaven you shall command your own price. Set her free! Afterwards torture me to the death and take your full pleasure!"

"I'll have it, anyway," retorted Louis with a hard, dry, mirthless laugh. "Know they--what for--you come?" He pointed to the Indians, who understood not a word of our talk; and we walked a pace off from the lodges.

"No! I'm not always a fool, Louis," said I, "though you cheated me in the gorge!"

"See those stones?" There was a pile of rock on the edge of the ravine.

"I do. What of them?"

"All of your Indian--left after the dogs--it lie there!" His eye questioned mine; but there was not a vestige of fear in me towards that boaster. This, I set down not vauntingly, but fully realizing what I owe to Heaven.

"Poor fellow," said I. "That was cruel work."

"Your other man--he fool them----"

"All the better," I interrupted.

"They not be cheated once more again! No--no--mine frien'! To come here, alone! Ha--ha! Stupid Anglo-Saxon ox!"

"Don't waste your breath, Louis," I quietly remarked. "Your names have no more terror for me now than at Laval! However big a knave you are, Louis, you're not a fool. Why don't you make something out of this? I can reward you. Hold _me_, if you like! Scalp me and skin me and put me under a stone-pile for revenge! Will it make your revenge any sweeter to torture a helpless, white woman?"

Louis winced. 'Twas the first sign of goodness I had seen in the knave, and I credited it wholly to his French ancestors.

"I never torture white woman," he vehemently declared, with a sudden flare-up of his proud temper. "The son of a seigneur----"

"The son of a seigneur," I broke in, "let an innocent woman go into captivity by lying to me!"

"Don't harp on that!" said Louis with a scornful laugh--a laugh that is ever the refuge of the cornered liar. "You pay me back by stealing despatches."

"Don't harp on that, Louis!" and I returned his insolence in full measure. "I didn't steal your despatches, though I know the thief. And you paid me back by almost trapping me at Fort Douglas."

"But I didn't succeed," exclaimed Laplante. "Mon Dieu! If I had only known you were a spy!"

"I wasn't. I came to see Hamilton."

"And you pay me back as if I had succeed," continued Louis, "by kicking me--me--the son of a seigneur--kicking me in the stomach like a pig, which is no fit treatment for a gentleman!"

"And you paid me back by sticking your knife in my boot----"