Little Fellow ceased speaking, wrapped himself in robes and fell asleep.
I could not doubt whose were the liberator's hands, and I marveled that she had not come with him. Had she known of our efforts at all? It seemed unlikely. Else, with the liberty she had, to come to Little Fellow, surely she would have tried to escape. On the other hand, her immunity from torture might depend on never attempting to regain freedom.
Now I knew what to expect if I were captured by the Sioux. Yet, given another stormy night, if Little Fellow and I were near the Sioux with fleet horses, could not Miriam be rescued in the same way he had escaped? Until Little Fellow had eaten and slept back to his normal condition of courage, it would be useless to propose such a hazardous plan. Indeed, I decided to send him to some point on the northern trail, where I could join him and go alone to the Sioux camp. This would be better than sitting still to be given as a hostage to the Sioux. If the worst happened and I were captured, had I the courage to endure Indian tortures? A man endures what he must endure, whether he will, or not; and I certainly had not courage to leave the country without one blow for Miriam's freedom.
With these thoughts, I gathered my belongings in preparation for secret departure from the Mandanes that night. Then I prepared breakfast, saw Little Fellow lie back in a dead sleep, and strolled out among the lodges.
Four days had passed without the coming of the avengers. The villagers were disposed to forget their guilt and treat me less sulkily. As I sauntered towards the north hill, pleasant words greeted me from the lodges.
"Be not afraid, my son," exhorted Chief Black Cat. "Lend a deaf ear to bad talk! No harm shall befall the white man! Be not afraid!"
"Afraid!" I flouted back. "Who's afraid, Black Cat? Only white-livered cowards fear the Sioux! Surely no Mandane brave fears the Sioux—ugh! The cowardly Sioux!"
My vaunting pleased the old chief mightily; for the Indian is nothing if not a boaster. At once Black Cat would have broken out in loud tirade on his friendship for me and contempt for the Sioux, but I cut him short and moved towards the hill, that overlooked the enemy's territory. A great cloud of dust whirled up from the northern horizon.
"A tornado the next thing!" I exclaimed with disgust. "The fates are against me! A fig for my plans!"
I stooped. With ear to the ground I could hear a rumbling clatter as of a buffalo stampede.
"What is it, my son?" asked the voice of the chief, and I saw that Black Cat had followed me to the hill.
"Are those buffalo, Black Cat?" and I pointed to the north.
As he peered forward, distinguishing clearly what my civilized eyes could not see, his face darkened.
"The Sioux!" he muttered with a black look at me. Turning, he would have hurried away without further protests of friendship, but I kept pace with him.
"Pooh!" said I, with a lofty contempt, which I was far from feeling. "Pooh! Black Cat! Who's afraid of the Sioux? Let the women run from the Sioux!"
He gave me a sidelong glance to penetrate my sincerity and slackened his flight to the proud gait of a fearless Indian. All the same, alarm was spread among the lodges, and every woman and child of the Mandanes were hidden behind barricaded doors. The men mounted quickly and rode out to gain the vantage ground of the north hill before the enemy's arrival.
Another cross current to my purposes! Fool that I was, to have dilly-dallied three whole days away like a helpless old squaw wringing her hands, when I should have dared everything and ridden to Miriam's rescue! Now, if I had been near the Sioux encampment, when all the warriors were away, how easily could I have liberated Miriam and her child!
* * *
Always, it is the course we have not followed, which would have led on to the success we have failed to grasp in our chosen path. So we salve wounded mistrust of self and still, in spite of manifest proof to the contrary, retain a magnificent conceit.
I cursed my blunders with a vehemence usually reserved for other men's errors, and at once decided to make the best of the present, letting past and future each take care of itself, a course which will save a man gray hairs over to-morrow and give him a well-provisioned to-day.
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 assembled 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 compass, 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 w
as 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 god. 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 embarrassment 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 cock-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——"
"And didn't succeed," broke in Louis regretfully.
At that, we both laughed in spite of ourselves, laughed as comrades. And the laugh brought back memories of old Laval days, when we used to thrash each other in the schoolyard, but always united in defensive league, when we were disciplined inside the class-room.
"See here, old crony," I cried, taking quick advantage of his sudden softening and again playing suppliant to my adversary. "I own up! You owe me two scores, one for the despatches I saw taken from you, one for knocking you down in Fort Douglas; for your knife broke and did not cut me a whit. Pay those scores with compound interest, if you like, the way you used to pummel me black and blue at Laval; but help me now as we used to help each other out of scrapes at school! Afterwards, do as you wish! I give you full leave. As the son of a seigneur, as a gentleman, Louis, help me to free the woman!"
"Pah!" cried Louis with mingled contempt and surrender. "I not punish you here with two thousand against one! Louis Laplante is a gentleman—even to his enemy!"
"Bravo, comrade!" I shouted out, full of gratitude, and I thrust forward my hand.
"No—no—thanks much," and Laplante drew himself
up proudly, "not till I pay you well, richly,—generous always to mine enemy!"
"Very good! Pay when and where you will."
"Pay how I like," snapped Louis.
With that strange contract, his embarrassment seemed to vanish and his English came back fluently.
"You'd better leave before the warriors return," he said. "They come home to-morrow!"
"Is Diable among them?"
"No."
"Is Diable here?"
"No." His face clouded as I questioned.
"Do you know where he is?"
"No."
"Will he be back?"
"Dammie! How do I know? He will if he wants to! I don't tell tales on a man who saved my life."
His answer set me to wondering if Diable had seen me hold back the trader's murderous hand, when Louis lay drunk, and if the Frenchman's knowledge of that incident explained his strange generosity now.
"I'll stay here in spite of all the Sioux warriors on earth, till I find out about that knave of an Indian and his captives," I vowed.
Louis looked at me queerly and gave another whistle.
"You always were a pig-head," said he. "I can keep them from harming you; but remember, I pay you back in your own coin. And look out for the daughter of L'Aigle, curse her! She is the only thing I ever fear! Keep you in my tent! If Le Grand Diable see you——" and Louis touched his knife-handle significantly.
"Then Diable is here!"
"I not say so," but he flushed at the slip of his tongue and moved quickly towards what appeared to be his quarters.
"He is coming?" I questioned, suspicious of Louis' veracity.
"Dolt!" said Louis. "Why else do I hide you in my tent? But remember I pay you back in your own coin afterwards! Ha! There they come!"
A shout of returning hunters arose from the ravine, at which Louis bounded for the tent on a run, dashing inside breathlessly, I following close behind.
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