by Terry Grosz
More heavy snows followed over the next several days along the Musselshell. With that, any thought of being pursued by other tribal members over the loss of the eleven horse thieves was quickly lost in the vast depths of winter’s white blanket. For the rest of that winter, the men did as always to keep themselves busy. Those duties included snaring other deep forest furbearers, casting mounds of bullets, patching or repairing clothing, tack was re-leathered, and firearms were repaired by Gabe. The usual wood hauled for their cooking fires, eating, cooking, and the telling of tall tales made taller as the winter of 1810-1811 progressed filled in the remaining gaps of time created by the deep winter snows.
***
Come the spring of 1811, the men were more than ready for the trapping season shortly at hand. Traps were checked, repaired, and smoked for the season ahead, and all the horses and mules needing it were shod. Soon, new grasses of spring shoved their heads through the semi-frozen ground and as the ice went out in the waters, the earliest migrating ducks arrived. That was followed by familiar ripples being made in the waters once again by happily swimming beaver, river otter, and muskrat after winter’s long and icy, deep sleep cast over the land.
Trapping season finally began once again on a bright but bitterly cold spring day. Griz and his lifelong partner Big-Eye went south on the Musselshell River as Gabe and Josh went to their old familiar beaver-rich waters to the north. Soon, the men were knee-deep in the icy water and cold mud of spring trapping as they set their traps in all the familiar places visited by beaver. Happily, the bear had not as yet come out from hibernation. This allowed the men to relax as they moved through the just leafing out heavy brush and willows around the beaver ponds and waterways during the following weeks. However, that relaxing period of time was soon cut short with the arrival of a ravenously hungry after many months of hibernation big boar grizzly. One unfortunately caught eating one of Gabe’s freshly trapped beavers. Two well-placed shots as he angrily charged out from the water at the two trappers quickly alleviated that problem, but created another of a kind that was more serious!
After reloading their rifles, Gabe and Josh’s horses began pulling the roped dead bear out of the way and off into some surrounding brush away from their trapping site. Since it was too stringy meat-wise to eat and its coat was too rubbed for making a good skin, it was going to be left, minus its claws, for other varmints to eat. It was during that bear dragging process that the men heard the sounds of horses’ hooves thundering on the soft spring soils coming directly towards them! Dropping their towing ropes, both men grabbed their rifles just as four Blackfeet warriors burst out from the brush not thirty yards from where the brothers quietly sat waiting.
From the looks on the Indians’ faces, it was obvious they were looking for those who had just shot. One look by the brothers and it quickly became apparent the warriors were armed to the teeth and looking for “bear.” Racing up to the spot where Josh and Gabe had dragged the bear up the riverbank and into the brush, the Indians braked to a stop. From atop their saddles, they quickly examined the bear’s skid marks and shod horse hoof prints leading away from the brush, shod hoof prints that would more than likely be made by a trespassing white man! With a bloodcurdling yell, they crashed into the brush with their horses looking for those dragging the bear as evidenced by the recent skid marks. Bursting out from the thick brush and onto the small clearing where Gabe and Josh sat on their horses, they ran headlong into two well-placed rifle shots
Boom-boom! went the trappers’ rifles which slapped heavy lead balls into the chests of the two nearest Blackfeet leading the charge! Both Indians flew backwards off their hard-charging mounts from the impact of the well-placed balls and into the way of their surprised trailing partners. Quickly reining up, the two trailing Blackfeet tried to move their horses out of the way from their falling partners and the trappers’ line of fire. However, the last thing they heard was pow-pow as Josh and Gabe fired their .69-caliber horse pistols into the two hard- charging, close-at-hand Indians. Heavy lead balls slammed into those Indians at close range spilling them from their horses and onto the ground alongside the previously dragged dead grizzly and their Blackfoot partners!
Without getting off their horses, the brothers quickly reloaded their rifles and then their pistols in case the four dead Blackfeet had some close-at-hand friends. For the longest time, the two men quietly sat there examining their surroundings and listening for the sounds of any more horses coming their way. Hearing nothing but a Clark’s nutcracker up in a lodgepole pine knocking the dickens out of a pinecone for its remaining seeds, the brothers smiled in relief, then relaxed their tight holds on their rifles.
“Now what?” said Gabe.
“Well, we finish dragging our dead grizzly way the hell over yonder by that hillside. That way if other bears begin feeding on the carcass, they won’t bother us in our trapping area like happened to us last year when One-Shot was kilt. As for the Blackfeet, we do the same. I figure by creating a huge meat pile, it will attract a passel of hungry critters. Soon there won’t be anything left of what happened here except some scattered bones and scat piles. However, just to make sure, we need to remove our bullets from the Indians’ bodies in case some of their kin come snooping around before they are all eaten. That way, maybe they will think the bear did in their brethren and we won’t get the blame. And if we ain’t blamed, that means we won’t more than likely have them howling savages down around our necks later on for what we was forced into doing here today.”
With that and their reloading done, the brothers dragged the dead grizzly bear over to a small rim of rocks and left him. Then after the grisly removal of the smashed balls from the bodies of the four dead Blackfeet, they, too, were dragged over to the grizzly pile and left for the wolves and other critters that would soon hungrily congregate. Finally, the grizzly bear drag marks were brushed over with a tree limb and the dead Indians’ horses tied off deep in the timber for later retrieval. Several hours later, after all their traps had been set and the next day’s trapping sites had been scouted out, the brothers returned to the earlier battlefield. Deep in the timber near the rocky rim where the bear and Indian bodies had been left, the air was now filled with the growls of a wolf pack as they “made meat.” High in the trees surrounding the macabre scene enacted below sat a number of ravens, gray jays, and magpies waiting for their turn at the “grit” piles once the wolves had fed up. Josh, looking over at Gabe and with a little grin, figured his plan for elimination of the evidence was hard at work. Gabe’s huge bearded smile confirmed those thoughts as well.
The rest of the afternoon was spent running their traps set earlier, removing the new carcasses, and skinning out their catch in the still beaver-rich waters. Then rounding up the Indians’ horses from the deep timber, the brothers walked all their horses through several small streams to lose their tracks if anyone tried to follow them. Finally, they headed for their cabin to continue the rest of their fur processing duties, secure in the knowledge they had hidden the evidence of their day’s deadly activities from prying eyes.
Rounding the turn to their cabin, Griz and Big-Eye stopped short and looked hard at their home site. They were surprised to make out four extra horses in their timber-hidden corral while the rest of Gabe and Josh’s animals grazed quietly in the meadow below their cabin. Looking over at each other, they spurred their mounts and trotted into their campsite with their rifles at the ready. As they did, they saw that Josh was outside cutting wood while a wisp of smoke rolled lazily up from the chimney signaling supper “makings” were on the way.
Nothing out of the ordinary here except those new horses, thought Griz with a puzzled look flooding across his face.
“Josh, where the damnation did those Indian ponies come from, and Blackfeet at that?” said Griz, as he lightly stepped off his mount and limbered up his sore knees from the long horse ride.
“Gabe and me had a run-in with a grizzly and afore we could clean up the mess, four Bla
ckfeet dropped in unexpected like. And they did not make themselves at home,” said Josh in a tenor and tone of speaking like he was discussing the weather instead of just killing four human beings.
“Damn,” said Big-Eye as he lit down from his mount as well, “seems like you boys run into the devil this morning and took your due,” he grinned.
“Any chance kin of them devils will be on to us fer the loss of their relatives?” slowly asked Jim with a look of concern running across his face. “Or, any chance they be kin from those horse thieves we kilt earlier in the winter?” he quickly continued.
“Don’t think so,” said Josh. “They run up on us pretty hard after hearing our shooting and I think they came to settle up with anyone other than their tribe for trespassing on their land. That would be to my way of thinking,” continued Josh. “Asides, we pretty well covered our trail by removin’ the killing balls from their bodies and mixing them in with the carcass of the dead griz back off the beaten trail for the critters to eat. Then we brushed out our trail as best as we could, creek-walking our horses out from the area hiding their hoof prints,” said Josh.
About then Gabe exited the cabin, hands and arms covered with flour saying, “Got venison cookin’ in bear grease in the skillets, biscuits agoin’ in the Dutch ovens, beans boilin’ with wild onions and hot pepper spices, along with plenty of coffee if any of you rascals are interested in putting on the ‘feed-bag.’”
“Hot damn. That sounds right passable to me,” said Big-Eye as he led his horse to the corral so he could remove its saddle for drying, put hobbles on, curry him, and then let him out to feed with their other livestock. “Damn good-looking horses those Indians had,” he said as he walked by the corral. Then something caught his skilled eyes and he stopped dead in his tracks. With that, he tied off his horse, removed the gate logs, and let himself into the corral. Lifting up several of the Indian horses’ rear feet, he turned and said, “Damnation, Fellas, these horses all be shod. My guess is them red devils lifted some trappers’ hair and stole their horses,” he grimly announced. Then without another word as if that was an everyday occurrence, Big-Eye unsaddled his horse, curried it, placed a set of hobbles on its front feet, and turned it and his pack animal out with the other trappers’ horses in the meadow to feed. “Them biscuits done?” he asked walking over to Gabe and slapping the “cook” on his massive shoulder. “’Cause iffen they be, you are lookin’ at a fellow that can put a heap of hurt on them without even blinkin’ with his one good eye,” he said with his characteristic, almost-toothless smile.
Supper fairly flew down that evening because the men still had to clean up their day’s trappings and Griz had another bear hide to flesh out and roll out onto the cabin roof to dry... As he did, Gabe just smiled. I bet the “griz” god wishes he had never had one of his kind go and kill off Jim s brother, Al. ’Cause when he did, he sure put the candlelights out on a lot of his fellow bears, he thought with a grin. And from the looks of it, Griz is just getting started in that bear killin’ and thinnin' out department...
Spring of 1811 passed quickly that year with no more run-ins with their neighbors, the Blackfeet. However, Griz Johnson continued with his bear-killing ways eliminating twenty-four bear before summer arrived. Once again, for the great bear community, it now seemed they probably wished they had left Al Johnson alone when they had the chance if the constant loss among their kin by the straight-shooting and avenging Griz Johnson had anything to do with it.
That summer when the beaver went out of their prime, the four men made another trip to Fort Raymond. Once again, the men found that they had to sell their furs low and purchase those goods needed for the coming year at the high end. But they had done well and at the end of the “figgerin,” they were able to purchase all they needed for another year living in their beloved frontier. Plus, with the sale of the horses taken from the Blackfeet, Lisa was able to put more credit due the group on his books. As it now stood, they had enough credit to skip a year of trapping and would still have enough on Lisa’s books to outfit themselves for an additional year if they so desired.
And once again, the brothers kept a sharp eye peeled and their ears to the ground for any sign of the Jenkins clan while at the fort. For the two weeks they remained at the fort that summer, no one matching the looks or names of that clan surfaced. In fact, in their offhanded conversations with others, none of the returning groups of trappers coming to the fort to trade had even heard of or seen hide nor hair of them. Once again, it was almost as if the earth had swallowed up the murderous clan before the Dent Brothers could bring them to justice for killing their kin... Or the Indians have done the killing for us, thought Josh.
Since they still had little competition from other trappers in their neck of the woods on the Musselshell and plenty beaver remaining in the outlying and untrapped waters, the men decided to have a go back at their trapping site regardless of the increasingly hard and dangerous times the Blackfeet were giving them. Little did any of them realize the winter of 1811 would bring one of the strangest events on record to the frontier. And, outright, save Gabe and Josh’s lives at the hands of a band of riled-up and murderous Blackfeet...
***
That fall in 1811, when the beaver came into prime, the four trappers were once again more than ready to practice their profession. However, prior to the advent of fall trapping, the men had harvested and processed over thirty buffalo and their cabin was fairly bursting at the seams with good buffalo hams, smoked hump ribs, and deerskin sacks filled with jerky. The deadly shooting eye of Griz Johnson, still on a mission to avenge the killing of his younger brother and last of kin by an earlier grizzly bear attack, continued with a vengeance. In addition to the rafters hanging heavily with buffalo meat, many soon-to-be great-tasting smoked bear hams hung alongside as well. The stack of buffalo hides in one of the group’s two lean-tos was almost as high as those being represented by dried grizzly bear hides! Yes, the bear clan had made one huge mistake in killing Jim Griz Johnson’s younger brother...
That fall and early winter in the Musselshell country was a mild one. In fact, winter in all its fury didn’t arrive until late December of 1811. But when it did, it corresponded with one of the greatest phenomena man had ever seen up to that time in the young life of the fledgling United States.
On the 15th of December, Gabe and Josh set forth to check their trap line. However, because of the lack of beaver now close to their cabin site, the boys were required to travel almost five miles one way to reach good trapping grounds. As they traveled that morning to their trapping area, both men noticed many strange happenings. Herds of elk were constantly running to and fro, and when they came close to Gabe and Josh, they hardly paid them any attention. They also noticed that the few remaining mallard ducks on the river and nearby beaver ponds would jump up for no apparent reason, fly a few feet and then land. Then up they would go once again and repeat the same odd behavior. As for the beaver swimming on the waterways, they were constantly slapping their tails indicating danger was close-at-hand and then not submerge like they usually did but continue on with the same odd actions. As for other birds, they were flying all around like chickens with their heads cut off and not making any sense or normal sounds. And the great bear, well, it was not behaving normally as well. They were constantly running around not paying any attention to the men and bawling loudly and constantly like small cubs when they had lost their mothers. That wasn’t the only odd behavior. Their horses and pack mule were not themselves either, acting like there was a grizzly close-at-hand or hot on their tails! The men had to constantly pay attention to their riding or both of them would have been thrown at a moment’s notice if the horses would have had their ways. On the ground around them, life there was unusual as well. It was nothing but a moving carpet of the little critters scurrying to and fro like their world was coming to an end. As for the many herds of bison in the area, they were a mess as well. Small herds ran every which way and then back again like the buff
alo flies were all over them and eating them alive. Then they would stampede into the river, stand there for a moment and then stampede out once again. Everywhere the boys looked, other herds of buffalo were doing the same goofy thing with their tails held high in the air in their agitated state!
“What the damnation?” Gabe said finally, as he once again had to rein back hard on his usually calm and dependable horse for the hundredth time.
“I don’t know,” said Josh, “but whatever is going on sure has the critters all riled up.”
Looking skyward, Josh noticed the normally clear blue skies were turning a sick-looking yellow hue. “Look at that, will you,” said Josh as he pointed skyward for his brother to have a look-see.
“Damn, Josh, what the hell-fire is going on?” said Gabe quietly, now getting a little concerned over all the strange circumstances going on around them.
The unusual didn’t just end there. Upon checking their traps, they discovered neither of the brothers’ trap lines had a single animal in them! Spooking a bit, they turned their animals for home and upon their arrival discovered that Griz and Big-Eye were already there and looking skyward nervously as well...
Stepping off his horse, Gabe noticed that their corral full of horses and mules were going in circles inside the enclosure like the devil himself was on their tails or a mess of biting flies were hard on their heels.
Just then, Griz stepped up saying, “You boys notice that the whole world is acting all crazy-like?”
“Sure is,” said Gabe as he stepped off his still-skittish horse. Taking both his and his brother’s horse’s reins, Gabe unsaddled the animals and put them in the corral for safekeeping.
Josh said, “Griz, you can read the weather. What the damnation is going on with all the critters acting all crazy-like and the sky being so darned yellow-looking?”
