by Terry Grosz
With those words, the men quietly emptied their cups of rum and shuffled off to their sleeping furs for another night under the stars and clouds of the ever-present mosquitoes along the Missouri River bottoms... Tomorrow would be another good day and the men would need all the daylight they could run under in order to get all of their last minute chores cared for. Little did the men realize that bad news would be coming their way from Spotted Eagle come the morrow...
Standing over his cooking fire tending his Dutch oven biscuits, Iron Hand was surprised to all of a sudden see Spotted Eagle materialize silently from out of the bushes along the riverbank and coming his way.
Moments later, Spotted Eagle said, “Good morning, My Brother.”
When he spoke, Iron Hand detected a slight bit of concern in the tone and tenor of Spotted Eagle’s voice. Ignoring the sound of concern in Spotted Eagle’s voice because he knew he would soon speak his piece, Iron Hand said, “Good morning, My Brother. You are just in time for some breakfast.” When he spoke, he did so with a happy smile under his heavy beard over the welcome presence of his close Blackfoot Indian friend and now, Brother.
“I am always ready for some of My Brother’s biscuits, said Spotted Eagle, as he sat down on a nearby sitting log and in typical Blackfoot custom for a guest, waited to be served.
Without another word, Iron Hand took two of his piping hot biscuits from his Dutch, shoveled them onto a tin plate and then slathered them with a generous helping of honey from a nearby jug just recently purchased from Fort Union’s stores of provisions. Then as custom dictated, Iron Hand served his Blackfoot Brother.
“UMMPHF,” said Spotted Eagle, as the sizzling hot biscuit crackled on his tongue when he shoveled in a generous bite without hesitation over the biscuit’s Dutch oven heat!
“Is My Brother like a small buffalo calf when it comes to eating a white man’s warm biscuits? Is he finding that he is not yet powerful enough to act like a mature man when it comes to eating something hot served by a white man?” asked Iron Hand with a ‘smile’ in the tone of his just spoken words to his struggling Brother.
Still mouthing all around in his mouth the piece of a hot biscuit, Spotted Eagle mumbled something that Iron Hand could not understand, so he broke out laughing over his Brother’s discomfort.
Soon that ‘too hot to eat biscuit’ moment passed and with a silly grin on his face, Spotted Eagle said, “I came here this morning to share with My Brother some news from some of my warriors just returning from hunting my village’s remaining ‘bad seed’. Instead, I am almost poisoned by my Brother’s bad cooking!”
Both men had a good laugh over the earlier ‘hot biscuit’ moment and then Spotted Eagle got down to the business for which he came. “My Brother, my warriors tell me that the ‘bad seed’ is as elusive as a mountain cat. However, he being from my nation, I can see why he is so hard and clever to catch and kill. My warriors tell me that the word from others out on the plains is that the ‘bad seed’ is now running with other bad seeds from the Gros Ventre and a small number of white men who have been ‘thrown away’ by McKenzie. They are now hunting any white trappers they can find, are killing them and taking their furs and livestock. Then they are taking what they steal and often selling those things stolen to their friends from the Hudson Bay Company forts further to the north. In turn, their Canadian brothers are supplying the bad seeds with all the guns and whiskey they wish to have and telling them to bring even more furs and horses from the white man trappers from the American Fur Company. They are also catching lone young Indians from other tribes and taking them captive and selling them to their Canadian brothers as well. That is especially so when selling the women and small children to them. Then the Hudson Bay people are selling those women and children to other trappers of their own kind as slaves and the women to ‘pleasure’ their lonely trappers.”
“My warriors are also telling me that the white man trappers they are finding that have been killed by the bad seeds, have died a long and slow death! That is why I am here this morning. Besides having my tongue burned with a white man’s biscuit, I am here to tell you that you and your friends need to be ‘mountain cat careful’ in everything you do once you leave the comfort of this fort. The last word from my warriors is that the ‘bad seed with the forehead scar’ is now found along the Missouri River because that is where they are finding the most trappers traveling to and from where they are trapping. Since that is where you wish to go next, I wanted to warn you of what awaits you if you are not careful,” continued Spotted Eagle.
Then as an afterthought, he spoke up once again saying, “Just as soon as my warriors rest up and provide food for their families, we all will go out once again and try and follow Chief Mingan’s words to find all the bad seeds, both Indian and white, to see that they join the Cloud People and wherever bad white men go when they are dead.”
By then, the other three trappers were seated around the pair of men on their sitting logs and listening in on Spotted Eagle’s and Iron Hand’s conversations.
When Spotted Eagle had finished speaking, Iron Hand thanked him for the information and his outward signs of concern. He then advised Spotted Eagle that he and his band of trappers would be leaving soon for the Porcupine River country to trap beaver and that they would heed his wise words and remain alert to the dangers posed by the ‘bad seed’ and his friends. Following that, the trappers shared breakfast and a cup of rum with their Blackfoot Indian friend.
After Spotted Eagle had left, the four trappers sat around their campfire and discussed the Indian’s words of caution. It was then decided that the men would return to the fort’s leather worker’s shop and reconfigure an addition to each man’s riding and first horse in the pack string saddles. By late afternoon that same day, the four trappers found their saddles altered to their satisfaction. Instead of having their extra weaponry on their first packhorse in the strings they would be leading into the Porcupine River country, a change had been made. The first animal in their pack string would still be carrying an extra loaded rifle and two pistols in case the trappers were jumped by hostile Indians. However, to the front of their personal riding saddles had just been added two additional custom-made pistol holders. Henceforth, instead of the two extra pistols being carried by the first horse in their pack string, two extra weapons would also be carried on the front of the saddle of each man’s riding horse. That meant that each man now carried a rifle while in the saddle, two pistols in his sash and two additional pistols in custom-made holsters attached to the front of each man’s riding saddle. In so doing and in case of extreme danger, each man was now capable of firing five shots at any adversaries, with a spare rifle and two single shot pistols still on his first packhorse. In short, in times of extreme danger, the four trappers would be capable of firing a total of 32 shots before they ‘ran dry’, if they lived that long that was… No two ways about it, a very deadly fusillade for anyone foolish enough to take the four trappers dead-on in a fair fight! That would be especially so if facing such firepower loaded with buck and ball and two of the men being such accurate shooters at close up and personal ranges with their rifles and pistols...
CHAPTER TEN: THE PORCUPINE RIVER, THE “BAD SEED” AND SAVING THE BROTHERS “DENT”
Three days later after having a final breakfast with Kenneth McKenzie, the four trappers rode out from Fort Union. In front rode Old Potts trailing a string of four heavily loaded pack animals, followed by Big Foot with his four pack animals, followed by Crooked Hand and Iron Hand trailing the same numbers of ‘loaded to the gills’ packhorses. Being the Free Trappers that they were, each man sported once again recently acquired, beautifully adorned and beaded, fringed buckskin shirts, beautifully beaded moccasins, and each of their riding horses were bedecked with brightly colored ‘wearing’ finery as well. All befitting the special class of historically high-spending and colorfully individualistic Free Trappers.
Old Potts kept his contingent of trappers heading due west along
the north bank of the Missouri for the next several days. As they did, the trappers soon had passed the Big Muddy, Poplar and Wolf Rivers without incident. During those days of travel, the men kept to the river bottoms and at night, after unpacking all the pack and saddle horses, camped in the deepest and most secluded of vegetative cover along the Missouri. This they did as a result of Spotted Eagle’s earlier warning about the “Bad Seed” and his bunch of renegade Gros Ventre and white men outcast trappers rumored to be ‘bushwhacking’ fellow travelers along the Missouri River because it was a chokepoint of travel, especially for all the heavily loaded trappers moving to and from the Fort Union trading post carrying valuable furs or their annual provisions.
Nine days later found the four trappers and their string of livestock at the confluence of the fabled Porcupine River and the ‘gateway’ to its rumored fabulous beaver trapping country further to the north. However, for their last two days of travel, Old Potts’s trappers had run across numerous herds of buffalo and several dozen trails of unshod horses whose Native American owners were more than likely hunting those buffalo. Camping that evening in the river bottoms at the confluence of the Porcupine River and the Missouri, the men decided to change their plans of travel. Being that the Indians were hunting the buffalo heavily for their winter meat stores, and the chances of discovery by the dreaded Gros Ventre were greater during daylight hours, the men changed their travel plans. Around their small campfire that first evening along the Porcupine River, the men decided for safety’s sake they would travel only during the early morning and early evening hours. In between those hours, the men would rest up and let their livestock graze in an out-of-the-way place to avoid discovery. The assumption being the nomadic Indians hunting the buffalo would be most active during the daylight hours, killing and butchering those animals killed. Then come the end of the day, they would be feasting or camping and not as active. So the trappers decided they would try and travel during those early morning and dusk hours of the day they suspected the Indian hunters would be less active, thereby reducing their chances of being inadvertently discovered and attacked.
Even utilizing that strategy, the trappers had to numerous times retire to the dense brush along the Porcupine to hide as numerous bands of Indians passed nearby. Thankfully their shod horse tracks were not detected by the Indian hunters, who were more concerned with the killing of buffalo as opposed to really inspecting a small number of shod horse tracks in and among the numerous buffalo herds moving back and forth across the rolling prairie’s lands.
For the next two-and-a-half days as the men rode north on the Porcupine, they scouted out the beaver trapping waters as they went. As they did, it was apparent that the beaver waters on the lower reaches of the Porcupine had already been heavily trapped and most sign was old or almost non-existent. Finally at the end of day two while traveling north on the Porcupine, the men began running into pristine beaver trapping waters. Numerous stick and mud dams dotted with active beaver houses now greeted their eyes at every turn in the river system’s waterways. It then became obvious to the trappers, that for whatever reason, other trappers had yet to reach the northernmost reaches of the Porcupine and that suited the four ‘Old Potts’ men just fine. In fact, camping along the river one evening, the men observed 51 beaver, which are primarily nocturnal, moving about in the ponds hauling clusters of aspen and willow limbs to their lodges and to their underwater food cache and storage sites. They also noticed that a great number of those beaver were of the largest in size that they had ever seen, or ‘blanket in size’ in the nomenclature of the trapping fraternity! In short, the big money-sized critters were abundant it seemed in just about every waterway...
Then the trappers ‘struck gold’ in another arena. They now had approached a number of low timbered hills off to the north and west of the river in their travels. Old Potts figured that was probably where Mountain Man Harlan Waugh had reportedly built his cabin out of the way of any main-traveled trails along the river’s floodplains years earlier. Pulling their pack strings into the timbered areas and out of sight of any prying eyes, the trappers made a dry camp for that first night.
Unpacking all of their animals and hobbling them, they were then let out nearby to graze under the watchful eyes of the trappers as they made camp nearby for the night. Stacking the packs of provisions and necessaries around their campsite in a defensive arrangement, the trappers built a small fire and feasted on almost raw or partially cooked buffalo steak, as they rested their tired knees from the many leg-cramped hours in the saddle riding to their current destination.
After supper, the men huddled around their small campfire, smoked their pipes and discussed plans for the next day. For the longest time Old Potts remained quiet as the other trappers made small talk about the area. Then Old Potts piped up saying, “If it were up to me, I would make my secluded camp somewhere in these hills, especially if I were Harlan. There’s plenty of small springs and ground seeps of water in most of the gullies, there is grass a-plenty for our stock, we would be out of the north winds, sight and sound of any winter storms or prying eyes, and we would be closer to some of the finest beaver trapping I have seen in my lifetime. I say tomorrow Crooked Hand and Iron Hand strike out on their horses and scout out this area and see if you can find anything resembling an old cabin. If one is located, check it out and see if it would be something the four of us could live in. However, as you two are moving about, keep your eyes peeled for any location that would make a proper secluded spot for us to build a cabin, if Harlan’s old one is not found or found to be unacceptable for all of us and gear. In the meantime, Big Foot and I will let our horses continue putting on the feed bag and guard our supplies a-waiting your return. What say you two to that plan?” asked Old Potts.
Iron Hand looked over at Crooked Hand for visual confirmation of what he was thinking and then said, “Sounds good to us. We can leave at right at daylight and stick to the timbered areas because if it were me, that is where I would build a cabin that was out of sight and out of the way from the worst of the winter winds. If we can find where Harlan built his cabin, we will check it out to see if it would be suitable for all four of us. If not, we will keep looking for a spot of our own.”
Having decided the next day’s activities, the four men turned to their sleeping furs early on and soon they became part of the night. The next morning, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand were up before dawn, had saddled their horses and were now standing around their small campfire warming themselves. Jerky was the word of the day for breakfast, and soon the two men had disappeared into the sparse timber of the adjacent low lying hills looking for Harlan’s old cabin or a spot for their new one where there would be good water, feed, firewood and cover from unwanted prying eyes.
After an hour of fruitless wandering looking for an old trapper’s cabin, Iron Hand remembered what had been told to Old Potts by Harlan Waugh, about leaving a cache behind because his horses could not take everything when Harlan had left for that year’s Rendezvous being held further to the south. The information Harlan had provided was that his cache was below a large fir tree looking toward the Porcupine River and his beaver trapping grounds. Telling Crooked Hand to follow him, Iron Hand rode his horse to the top of a low lying ridge, then stood up in his stirrups and looked all around at the terrain lying below him. Lying to his north stood a tall stand of fir trees out all by themselves along the edge of a finger of pine trees in which they had been traveling through most of the morning.
“Come On, Crooked Hand. We need to head over to that grove of firs. That may be where Harlan’s old cabin sits,” said Iron Hand, as he sat back down in his saddle and then spurred his horse in that direction. Twenty minutes later as luck would have it, the two men rode into a secluded timbered glen holding an old trapper’s cabin! Riding up to the front of the cabin, the two men dismounted and entered the hell-for-stout looking cabin. Looking all around inside, except for some evidence of small animals like squirrels and mice living ther
ein, the cabin appeared to be pretty sound. Stepping back outside, the two men moved around the cabin and declared its walls, foundations and roof sound as a Spanish silver dollar. The cabin was well-hidden from any Indian traffic moving along the Porcupine River lying to the east, and a small but active ground seep with adjoining springs provided a plentiful supply of fresh water for man and horse alike. Looking around even further, the men could see there was an abundance of firewood within close distance to the cabin and sported a nearby watered meadow that was knee deep in good grass to a bull buffalo.
