The Blackfoot Trail

by Charles G. West

  Yellow Hand had refused to give up the search for the men who killed his brother, insisting that only fools would try to cross over the mountains in the winter. “They have made a camp somewhere to wait for the spring,” he had maintained. And along with three warriors who trusted his leadership, he had scouted a half dozen valleys that offered protection from the winter storms. At last his persistence had come to bear fruit, for here in the Missoula Valley he had found them, burrowed in the ground like prairie dogs.

  “We must decide what is the best thing to do,” Yellow Hand said. “It would not be wise to attack them since we are only four, and there is still too much snow to ride in quickly and drive off their horses and mules. They are camped close to the white man’s village as well.”

  “What are we going to do?” Long Walker asked. “Why have we traveled all this way if we are going to do nothing?”

  “This is what I think,” Yellow Hand said. “I think they are not going anywhere until the weather gets better. I think we should go back to our village and mount a full war party. With many warriors, we can kill all the whites. And with many warriors, the people in the white man’s settlement will be afraid to come to help them. That is what I think.”

  The others nodded in agreement with only one questioning comment from Long Walker. “Our village is a long way from this place. What if the white men have gone before we can get back?”

  “The mountains are covered with snow,” Yellow Hand replied. “It will be another full moon before they are able to travel. There is plenty of time for us to return.”

  “I agree with Yellow Hand,” Wounded Elk said.

  “I agree also,” Red Sky, the youngest of the four, said. “But we could slip into their camp tonight and steal some of their horses.”

  “It is better not to warn them to prepare against future attacks,” Yellow Hand said. The others nodded their acceptance of his wisdom. He smiled at young Red Sky. “You will have your chance to steal many horses and count coup many times if you have a little patience.”

  “Not even the one man who led the ponies into the trees?” Red Sky persisted, causing the three older men to laugh.

  “It’s best not to take a chance that he might shout an alarm to the others,” Yellow Hand said, as the four withdrew from the thicket from which they had watched the camp. “If he is the one who killed my brother, as Wounded Elk has said, then it is I who should have the right to kill him. When it is dark, then I’ll look for him in the trees. If I can find him alone, I will kill him.”

  “He’s the one who killed Two Arrows,” Wounded Elk said. “I saw him. He wasn’t with the others when we found them by the river. He came from the mountain ridge behind us and shot Two Arrows and Dead Man. I was lucky to get away before he shot us all.”

  “He doesn’t look like the other white men in that camp,” one of the other warriors said. “Maybe he is the ghost the Blackfeet call Joe Fox, who they say walks along the high peaks of the mountains.”

  “A ghost, eh?” Yellow Hand responded. “He didn’t look like a ghost to me. Tonight, when it’s dark, I’ll find this ghost and kill him.”

  Chapter 6

  With no reason to believe that he was being stalked, Joe Fox led his horses down along the river. At the edge of the trees, where a low, rolling line of hills came down to the river, he climbed on the paint and struck out across the treeless slope. Although darkness was already descending over the valley, he decided to ride on until finding shelter at the base of the mountains beyond another treeless mesa. The covering of snow made traveling at night easy enough to see the breaks and gullies that might otherwise have hampered him. Consequently, he was in no particular hurry to get anywhere. The only urgency he felt was to remove himself from the people he was leaving behind.

  After he had ridden for a little over an hour, a light snow began to fall, creating a lacy veil over the dark form of the mountain directly before him now. He pulled the hood of his bearskin coat over his head and pressed on, oblivious to the falling snow. Though heavy on his mind, he decided to put away thoughts of Callie Simmons and her parents, and bring his concentration back to what he knew best—survival. Thinking of his horses then, he determined it time to find adequate shelter for them. A long, deep ravine, carved into the base of the mountain was his choice for a campsite. Sheltered from the icy winds by a thick growth of pines, the defile offered protection for his horses as well as a little grass under a thin blanket of snow. “It won’t be much longer, boy,” he said as he took the saddle off the paint, “and the winter will start to let up.”

  Stealing cautiously across the open meadow, Yellow Hand, followed closely by his companions, made his way toward the cottonwoods that framed the river. Once they reached the cover of the trees, they paused to look carefully around them. There was no sign of the man they searched for or the horses he led. There was, however, an easy trail in the snow that told them which way he had gone. Squinting in the darkness of the forest at the tracks left by the horses, Yellow Hand asked Wounded Elk, “Do you still think this man is a ghost? These are tracks a child could follow. I don’t believe ghosts leave tracks.”

  Wounded Elk shrugged, not ready to concede. “All we see here are tracks left by the ponies. The ponies are not ghosts. There are no tracks left by the man, so who can say?”

  He was answered by a quiet laugh from Yellow Hand. “We will see if this ghost sheds blood when I kill him,” he boasted. “Come now,” he said and set out to follow the tracks in the snow.

  When the trail left the trees and continued across the treeless hill, they stopped to speculate again. “He leaves the others,” Wounded Elk said. “He goes back to his home in the mountains.”

  “Maybe,” Yellow Hand said, disappointed to find that his brother’s killer had not camped in the cottonwoods, and unwilling to admit that Joe Fox had managed to slip away while they had sat waiting for darkness. “He cannot hide his trail in the snow. I’ll track him down and kill him. My brother must be avenged.”

  “We will follow him,” Wounded Elk said in support of his friend, but deep in his heart he still had uneasy feelings about the man they sought to kill. Dead Man and Two Arrows were both mighty warriors, and they fell before Joe Fox’s gun. He would prefer to leave this ghost to go his own way. Yellow Hand’s plan to return to their village to organize a large war party was a good one. Rubbing out the party of white mule riders should be revenge enough for Two Arrows’ death. He did not share his feelings of reluctance with the others, however.

  “I am afraid if we go after this one man in the high mountains,” Long Walker said, “it may take too long to catch him. If we are going to attack the white men in the holes by the river, we need to go back to our village and get our warriors ready. The white man is crazy. Who knows when they might decide to leave? They may not wait until the passes are clear.”

  “There is wisdom in what Long Walker says,” Wounded Elk said. “There is much preparation to ready our warriors for battle. This is something we should talk about.”

  Yellow Hand nodded and considered the comments. Although Wounded Elk sought to hide his reluctance to follow this ghost, Yellow Hand sensed his friend’s apprehensions. “You may be right, but I know what I must do.” Looking at Wounded Elk, he said, “You and Long Walker should ride back to our village to prepare for the attack. Red Sky can go with me to kill Joe Fox.”

  It was agreed then. Long Walker and Wounded Elk started back on the long trek to the Gros Ventre village while Yellow Hand and the eager young Red Sky set out after the lone mountain man the Blackfoot called Joe Fox.

  The man they hunted was in the process of making his camp a little more weatherproof, thinking the ravine a good place to stay for a while before moving higher up to one of his regular camps by the waterfall. By the light of a full moon that broke through with the passing of the recent snow clouds, he selected a spot in a stand of young pines. Picking four of the young trees, he bent the tops over and tied them together, formin
g a crude shelter. Cutting branches from other trees, he covered his shelter, making it better able to protect him from the weather. His hut of pines also allowed him to make his fire inside, away from any eyes that might be about. By the look of the sky, there should be more snow on the way, possibly by morning. That should help cover the trail he had left in the snow.

  When his camp was finished and his horses taken care of, he roasted some of the dried meat he carried. He couldn’t help but think of the times Callie had brought him pan bread or some other thing she had cooked to eat with his jerky. As soon as the thought sprang forth, he forbade his mind to dwell on Callie Simmons. He had wasted enough thoughts on foolish fantasies that could not be. He must walk the path that had been set before him and leave the white man to his own world. His self-council was not enough to ease his mind, however, and he became restless and ill at ease, with a feeling that all was not well. He decided he needed to breathe the clean mountain air, free of the smoke from his fire. Taking his rifle, he left the hut and stood for a while listening to the sounds of the night. Looking above him, he saw a knob formed at the rim of the ravine where more young pines grew in a half circle. He decided to climb up to the knob to await the morning sun. It would not be long before it rose. He had labored all night and he felt the need to rest, but his restless feelings made the thought of sleep impossible. When he reached the knob of pines, he decided it would be a good place to watch the sun come up over the mountains.

  The two Gros Ventre warriors paused to study the trail that now led up a draw at the foot of the mountain. Yellow Hand looked up at the sky. “It will be morning soon. I think he has decided to make his camp up this ravine.” Red Sky nodded. He was in agreement that if Joe Fox intended to climb the mountain, this draw was not a reasonable path to attempt. It went only a quarter of the way up before ending at the base of a sheer cliff.

  With prospects of catching the mountain man while he was sleeping, they hurried along the trail, following it up the snowy draw, eager to reach the camp before sunup. Suddenly, Yellow Hand held his hand up to halt Red Sky. With hand signals only, he directed him to back his pony until reaching a pine thicket they had just passed. As soon as they reached it, Yellow Hand slid off his pony and whispered to Red Sky to do the same. He explained then that they had almost blundered right into the camp. “He has made a lodge with young trees,” Yellow Hand said. “His horses are tied in the trees beyond.” He looked overhead at the sky again just as the first tiny rays of the morning sun probed the trees at the rim of the ravine. “It will be light soon. We must hurry to be ready.”

  Leaving their ponies in the thicket, they crept forward until they reached a point some thirty yards from the pine shelter. There they split up on either side of the trail in order to set up a cross fire. Yellow Hand hoped to catch his enemy as he walked out of his shelter, so he waited until the sun had risen over the ridges to the east. Still, Joe Fox did not come out. Too impatient to wait longer, he inched a few yards closer, then gave Red Sky the signal to shoot, and both warriors opened fire with their repeating rifles, pumping round after round into the makeshift shelter, sending pine limbs flying and filling the ravine with thunderous echoes.

  After both men emptied the magazines of their rifles, they charged up to the shelter to peer inside. Stunned, they stood gaping into an empty hut. “Up here,” Joe Fox said, and they both turned toward the sound, looking up into the glare of the sun as it framed a dark image against a background of young pines. In the blinding light, it appeared to the two assassins that the image stood in a flaming arch, and in the next instant fiery missiles reached out to strike down both of them.

  Joe cocked the Winchester, ejecting the last empty shell, and stood watching the two bodies sprawled before his campsite for a few moments to make sure they were dead. When there was no sign of life from either, he made his way back down the side of the ravine, alert to the possibility there may be more than these two. At the bottom of the ravine, he scouted cautiously along the trail until he came to the two ponies tied in a thicket. Satisfied then that they were alone in the attempt to kill him, he was left to ponder the reason. After going back to examine the dead, he was able to identify them as Gros Ventre, and realized that they must have been seeking revenge for the slaying of their brothers. He had been spared because of his feelings of restlessness. He also wondered whether the slight feeling of uneasiness he had experienced while making his camp had been caused by a sense of danger, as if something had been warning him. He did not discount it. It was a trait often manifested in wild animals, and like a wild animal, he had lived many years alone in the mountains.

  Both Indians had early models of repeating Henry rifles. Joe checked the action of each and grunted his satisfaction. They would be worth something in trade for supplies. He had survived the attempt on his life, but all was not well, for two of his horses were lying on the ground, having been hit by lead flying from the warriors’ rifles. Their screams of pain had gone unheard amid the volley of gunfire. He was relieved to see the paint standing, nervously stomping his hooves and stepping from side to side. On closer inspection he found no wounds. For that he was thankful. He and the paint had been partners for a long time. Then he wondered whether there would be more Gros Ventre coming to find him, but the thought left him quickly, for suddenly he felt very tired and in need of sleep.

  He untied the paint and the other, a sorrel he had captured in the first encounter with the Gros Ventre, led them away from the bodies, and tied them again. With the horses quieted down, he went back by the fire and lay down to rest. He would sleep, and afterward he would collect the two ponies in the thicket and leave this ravine to the buzzards.

  Callie Simmons slid the cake of pan bread off the huge iron skillet onto a folded cloth, since the bread was larger than any plate she had. She glanced up at her mother and smiled. “I’ll bet Joe would appreciate a piece of this to go with his coffee,” she said cheerfully.

  “I expect he might,” Cora replied without enthusiasm. “But he’s been living without it for most of his life, so I wouldn’t bother taking him any.” She glanced over at Jake and met his gaze. “Our supplies are running low as it is, without feeding every wild critter in the woods.”

  Callie was shocked by her mother’s harsh comments, unaccustomed to any show of selfishness from Cora Simmons. “Mama,” she replied, “I can’t believe you’d begrudge a little piece of bread for someone who’s done so much for us.”

  Her father spoke up then. “Just forget about it, Callie. We think it best if you don’t hang around someone like Joe Fox no more. Can’t nothin’ good come from it.”

  “And a lot bad,” her mother added.

  Obviously distressed, Callie almost dropped the cake of bread on the ground, scarcely believing the words coming from her parents’ mouths. Her mother had been trying to discourage Callie’s friendship with the strange, quiet man from the mountains ever since Joe had first come to rescue them. But her father had never said a negative word in association with the man who saved his life. Dismayed, but not for long, her eyes flashed with anger, and she broke off a generous piece of the fresh bread. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you two,” she scolded. “Joe is the kindest, most thoughtful man I’ve ever met. He deserves a lot more than a little hunk of pan bread, and I’m taking it to him!” With that, she turned abruptly and left the cave.

  “Callie!” her mother cried out and reached for her arm to stop her, but Callie was already out of her reach. “You come back here!” she ordered, but her daughter ignored her. Cora ran out the entrance after the head-strong girl. Jake didn’t know what to do, so he followed his wife outside. The girl didn’t get far before she ran headlong into Bradley Lindstrom as he was walking past their hovel.

  “Whoa, young lady!” Bradley exclaimed as he caught Callie in time to keep her from falling. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lindstrom,” Callie replied, embarrassed by her reckless exit from her fa
mily’s cave. “I should have been looking where I was going.” Recovering her composure then, she answered his question. “I was going to take Joe some fresh pan bread, if he’s still in his camp.”

  “Joe’s gone,” Bradley said, and glanced up to see Jake and Cora as they stepped outside after their daughter.

  “Gone?” Jake asked. “Did you say he was gone?”

  “Yep,” Bradley replied. “Musta lit out last night sometime—didn’t say nothin’ to nobody about leavin’.”

  Jake cast a quick look in Cora’s direction and she returned his gaze with a slight nod, silently recognizing his apparent success in serving notice to the wild young man. Jake acknowledged her approval with a nod of his own.

  Bradley went on to convey his concern. “He said he was gonna stay around for a few days, but he’s already gone. Luke Preston’s boy was over in those cottonwoods early this mornin’. There wasn’t no sign of Joe, and he found tracks leadin’ out toward the mountains to the south.” Bradley paused to scratch his head thoughtfully. “What I’m afraid of, though, is if he’s ever plannin’ to come back, ’cause we were sure hopin’ we could talk him into leadin’ us to Oregon come spring.”

  “Could be he’s just gone huntin’,” Jake said, experiencing a slight feeling of guilt for the possibility that he had cost his friends the services of Joe Fox.

  “Don’t look that way,” Bradley said. “He took his horses with him, all of ’em.”

  “Well, I reckon there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it,” Cora said. “It’s hard to depend on a man like that.” She glanced at Callie. “Wild ones, you can never tell what they’ll do.”

  “I don’t know,” Bradley replied, not necessarily in agreement with Cora’s assessment of the man who had proven to be pretty damned dependable in his eyes. “I hope he’ll change his mind about goin’ with us come spring.” He called to mind a conversation he’d had with Joe the day before. Raymond Chadwick was there as well. Joe had said then that he had a camp in the mountains two days’ ride from this valley, where he sometimes stayed part of the year. It was one of his favorite hunting spots, he had said, at the base of a waterfall that fed Otter Creek. If Joe really was gone for good, maybe it would be worthwhile to try to find that camp and hope they found him there as well. “Well,” he finally said, “I expect I’d best go see if my mules are doin’ all right.” He strode off toward the corral, leaving the three of them to consider this unexpected development.