by Terry Grosz
Little Fawn began having labor pains and Gabe summoned her mother and cousin to help in the birthing process. For the next two days, Little Fawn’s cries of pain could be heard coming from her mother’s tepee. Gabe, in the meantime, almost spun himself into the ground not knowing what to do. Finally, the cries of pain stopped coming from the tepee!
A short time later, Little Fawn’s mother exited the tepee with a haggard look on her face, but in her hands was a small bundle wrapped in a tanned river otter skin. Hardly daring to breathe, Gabe walked over to Little Fawn’s mother and looked into the river-otter-skin bundle. There looking back at him was the darkest set of brown eyes he had ever seen! Looking more closely, Gabe could see a pink and wrinkly boy child but one that appeared to be healthy and lively. Then he looked past Little Fawn’s mother at the tepee. She beckoned for him to enter which he did.
There lying naked and bloody on a bearskin lay Little Fawn sweaty, bloody and drawn-looking, but with a slight, weak smile on her face. Then she gestured for Gabe to come closer so she could hold his hand. Speaking to her in Crow, Gabe ascertained she was all right, exhausted and tired, but would live. Then he covered her up with the bearskin on which she lay, gently picked her up and carried her back to their cabin. Once there, her son was laid on her chest so he could nurse.
It was then that Cone Flower took over the nursing duties and caring for her sister. It was about a week before Little Fawn was up and about, but soon she was her old self. Meanwhile, the cabin fairly rocked with all the sounds two small babies make as they adjusted to their new world.
For the rest of that summer of 1814, Josh and Gabe stayed busy making ready for the fall trapping season. A new lean-to was added to the one already on-site, and the horse corral was expanded to accommodate the four new horses taken during the fight with the Blackfeet when Josh was shot in the face. Then the trappers participated in several buffalo hunts with the tribal members. Afterwards, they smoked meat, made jerky, cast more bullets, shod horses, and floated their horses’ teeth as was needed. Lastly they repaired tack, built new sleeping platforms for the children, caught and smoked fish, and prepared their traps for the coming trapping season.
Late fall when the beaver moved into prime, the men were once again more than ready for their outdoor activities. That first morning picked to begin trapping dawned cold and rainy, but the men were more than ready to put aside their household chores and begin trapping once again. Adding buffalo capes to their gear to address the inclement weather, they kissed their wives and babies, mounted up and disappeared into the timber’s mists next to their cabin. Little did they realize that when they returned, things would be changed forever...
Slipping into the cold beaver pond waters, Gabe waded out to a dead beaver floating at the end of his trap’s chain. Removing the heavy beaver, he tossed it onto the bank, set his trap once again at the end of the beaver run, scented the scent stick, then waded out onto the bank. Once there, Gabe began rubbing his coldwater-numbed legs. Then looking over at his brother, he observed he was intently squinting his eyes at something off in a distance. Sensing trouble, Gabe grabbed his rifle and, without a word, began looking all around for any sign of danger. Holding his finger to his lips for silence, Josh, after making sure his brother was more than ready, kicked his horse slightly in the flanks and headed off into the brush towards a near-distant low ridge along the river. Riding over to the low ridge, Josh leaned over the shoulder of his horse and began looking intently at something on the ground. Gabe remained alert and alongside his horse in case instant flight would be needed. Satisfied he had correctly “read” the “sign” he had been examining on the ground, Josh returned to his brother’s side with a worried look on his face.
“Indians and a passel of them,” flatly stated Josh in low tones. “Their tracks are this morning’s and I would guess them to be forty or more from the looks the way the ground is all tore up by their hoof prints. Not a shod one in the bunch and if I were a gambling man, I would say they be Blackfeet,” he tersely commented. “They also be headin’ towards our valley and the Crow encampment,” he said as he strained his eyes looking in the general direction the tracks had gone as if hoping he was wrong in his assessment.
With those words, Gabe vaulted onto his horse and, leaving the dead beaver behind, the two trappers cautiously began following the suspect Indians’ trail. They trailed the pony tracks over the next two ridges and, as Josh had figured, they were heading towards the Crow encampment and the area of their cabin! Then off in a distance, the two trappers heard the sporadic popping sounds of numerous rifles and pistol shooting! Spurring on their horses, both men broke into a gallop leaving all caution behind as they bolted for their cabin and families. Rounding a turn below the Crow encampment to the increased sounds of a battle going on in all its fury, the trappers ran headlong into a Blackfoot horse herd that had been left behind as the Indians had crept into the Crow encampment silently on foot for the surprise it offered. Holding the horse herd for the return of their brethren from the fight were four Blackfoot teenagers, probably on their first raid. It was also their last as the trappers rode their horses headlong into the Blackfoot horse herd, scattering them to all points of the compass. The four surprised and terrorized teenage Blackfoot boys, before they could raise any alarm, were swiftly dispatched by Gabe and Josh’s accurately thrown tomahawks and then rifle butts used as clubs.
In so doing, they avoided alarming the attacking Blackfeet as to the problem facing them to their rear. Retrieving their tomahawks from the bodies of the boys, the trappers left their pack animal tied off in the timber, grabbed their extra rifles and raced headlong into the fight at the Crow encampment from the rear of the band of Blackfoot warriors. Yelling and hollering all the way for the demoralizing effect it would have on the attackers, Gabe and Josh rode headlong into the furious fight. Firing at close range into the backs of the Blackfeet with their rifles, Josh and Gabe quickly killed four Indians. Dropping their rifles, they each grabbed one of their pistols from their sashes and killed another Blackfoot warrior from a distance so close that the dead had powder bums on the sides of their heads. Then using those pistols as clubs, the trappers swung the now-empty pistols at the close-in heads for all they were worth. They managed to brain several Blackfeet until the pistols exploded into useless parts from the impacts with bony brain cases. Grabbing their spare and last pistols from their sashes, they killed two more Blackfoot warriors at close range. Then they commenced using them as clubs in the melee until they, too, were useless junk from battering so many hard heads. Dropping their now useless pistols, the trappers started swinging their tomahawks and slashing with their knives in their other hands for all they were worth until they were dragged from their horses by many enraged Blackfoot hands.
But by then it was all but over as the Crow warriors, now encouraged by the furious attack to the rear of the Blackfeet, swarmed over the madly fighting pile of Indians and trappers. Quickly it became one madly moving, killing swirl of primitive humanity! It was all over except for the last few crushing of skulls by the Crow’s tomahawks on their wounded and dying Blackfoot foe. Gabe and Josh stood back-to-back in a pile of dead and dying Blackfeet around their legs, breathing heavily from the emotion of such heavy killing. Then much yelling and howling in despair began to rend the air as the survivors recognized the losses among themselves and began mourning loved ones killed in battle who were now moving with the Cloud People across the short grass prairies...
“Josh, are you alright?” asked a worried and bleeding Gabriel.
“I will live. I am without two fingers on the left hand and have several deep cuts but thanks to wearing my buffalo cape, many knife stabs didn’t go into me too deeply. How about you, Brother?” he asked, now looking closely for the first time at his last of kin.
Gabe was bleeding from several deep knife cuts on his massive arms and had a severe cut across his temples that bled so badly he could only see from one eye due to the massive blood fl
ow. He was also holding in a small handful of his intestines from a vicious knife thrust to his side, but other than that, appeared as “fine as frog hair”
“My brothers, you came at a good time. I am afraid we lost many in the fight but the Blackfeet even more,” said a bloodied and bruised Buffalo Calf. “But I am afraid for your wives and children. They were in Grass Moon’s tepee visiting my parents when the attack started. It soon collapsed under the weight of many warriors fighting around it with all inside. Let us go and see,” he continued with a worried look.
With Gabe holding in his intestines with one hand, the three men walked quickly over to Chief Grass Moon’s tent. Over the top of it were strewn the bodies of eleven dead warriors and two squaws caught in the fury of the fighting. Pulling off the many bodies, Buffalo Calf and Josh were able to partially lift the tepee and began dragging out the living. First came Buffalo Calf’s mother, Buffalo Lady, who was soon followed by Cone Flower and Little Fawn. However, Chief Grass Moon had been shot through the head as he had exited his tepee to enter the fight. Cone Flower and Little Fawn’s babies that they had with them, however, had been crushed in the fighting! Even through their wounds, Josh and Gabe found tears streaming down their bloodied faces as they held their little bundles of the future who now lived no more except with the Cloud People.
* **
For the next several hours, the wounded were tended to by the remaining tribal members. The Blackfoot dead were dragged off to the far end of the meadow for the critters to eat after being scalped and having their trigger fingers removed. That was followed with the Crow dead being prepared for burial amidst much wailing, slashing of arms, and wearing of ashes on one’s face. Little Fawn and Cone Flower, realizing their babies were dead, carefully lay them by the tepee and then began quietly tending to the wounds of their men. A red-hot knife seared Josh’s lost finger stumps, and Cone Flower and Little Fawn sewed up Gabe’s wounds after carefully washing them out and bear greasing them over. Then as the Crow tribe rounded up the Blackfoot horse herd, they returned the trappers’ horses and pack animal to them. Back at their cabin, the men rested after they had reloaded their rifles and put their horses into the corral. Leaving their men resting, the wives returned to the Crow encampment to help the rest of their people. Two days later, their babies were placed together in a tanned buffalo robe and placed in a burial scaffold near the trappers’ cabin. Nothing more was said about their deaths because to do so would cause the dead to linger in the “In-Between World,” instead of moving on to the Happy Hunting Grounds according to Crow tradition.
Josh, who recovered first, pulled all their traps. Then waiting for Gabe to heal up, which took another two weeks, he stayed around their cabin. When Gabe had healed sufficiently to sit astride a horse without too much pain from his side wound, the men returned to trapping. Once again, their cabin was soon filled with beaver, river otter, and muskrat furs. The men’s trapping almost took on a vengeance, as if trying to forget the loss of their children and seemed to be a race against time, as if the meanness of their frontier lives now seemed to be mentally closing in around them...
Come winter and ice-up, the men joined the remaining members of the Crow tribe in their many buffalo hunting ventures, but something seemed to be nagging the two men every step of the way. First, they had lost all their kin in Missouri to the Jenkins clan, then almost their own lives several times over from encounters with the Indians, and now, the lives of their children. It seemed the beauty, raw grace, and grandness the frontier had once offered had now run its course and lost its lure in their minds. It seemed almost every time the men turned around, they were bumping into other trappers or the other Indian tribes were getting more and more indignant over the numbers of white man in their ancestral country and his killing excesses. Then that led to more killing... Surprisingly, these concerns almost made the men long for the civilization they had left so many years ago ... almost.
Come the spring of 1815, the men readied themselves for another trapping season. Before they commenced, Buffalo Calf made a call one evening at their cabin. During that visit he announced that the remainder of his band were heading further east to join another larger band of Crow for the safety the new band’s numbers allowed and the added distance it would place between them and their expanding, always-troublesome Blackfoot enemies. In addition, the ground on which they now lived had many bad memories. Because of that, his band had decided to move on and begin anew. The trappers and their wives sadly acknowledged Buffalo Calf’s information. After a short conference, Josh and Gabe advised they would finish out the trapping season at their current site and move on as well. Where to, the brothers had not yet decided, but somewhere away from the bloody Blackfeet but still near good beaver-trapping waters because that was the living they preferred. At least those were their thoughts for now...
One week later, Buffalo Calf’s band picked up stakes and moved to the east in an area almost devoid of beaver water but heavy with herds of buffalo. As for the trappers and their wives, they continued trapping until the beaver left their prime. Then they prepared to make their annual trip to Fort Raymond to trade their furs for what they would need for the following year’s frontier adventures. And, what a dramatic adventure that would soon turn out to be...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN : ST. LOUIS BOUND!
June of 1815 found Gabe, Josh and their wives heading to Fort Raymond with thirteen members of Buffalo Calf’s Crow band. They had met on the trail and formed up for the protection it offered as they made their way to Fort Raymond to sell their furs and hides. One morning while on that trip, Gabe and Josh were hunting for an elk when they heard several shots in a canyon in the near distance. Figuring they may have come from several other trappers out hunting on their way to Fort Raymond, the brothers rode eagerly to the sound of the shooting. Rounding a turn below a long knoll, the brothers sighted a wisp of smoke coming from a campfire tucked away in a stand of aspens at the head of the canyon. Trotting their horses into the camp, they were surprised to find it empty. The camp’s occupants’ riding horses and pack animals were still tethered to several trees and their gear was strewn about their lean-to, but no one was in sight.
“Hello, the camp,” shouted Gabe to see if someone was nearby. There was no response other than the squalling of a lone gray jay further up the canyon.
“Let’s ride towards that jay,” said Josh. “They are usually the first to find a fresh kill and maybe that is where our trappers are.”
With that, the two brothers rode into the small canyon until they spooked off several gray jays hopping around on the top of a fresh elk carcass. Moving closer, they were surprised to find the elk shooters lying dead alongside the animal’s carcass! Both trappers had been back shot and once that had been determined, Josh and Gabe quickly looked around for any potential danger that deadly incident spelled. The forest remained quiet except for more gray jays squalling further up the draw over being disturbed from their fresh elk breakfast by Josh and Gabe.
“Who would do such a thing?” asked Gabe, as he kept squinting his eyes into the dark timber for any sign of the “back shooters” and the potential danger they represented.
“I don’t know, Brother, but the killin’ work don’t appear to be that of Indians. They wouldn’t go off after the killin’ without takin’ the men’s horses and rifles,” slowly said Josh as his eyes continued scanning the deep timber for signs of danger.
Picking up the dead trappers’ rifles, pistols, knives, and possibles, Gabe and Josh carefully rode into the forest looking for the back shooting culprits. There they chanced upon eight sets of shod horses’ tracks! Four of the horses had been ridden and the remaining four had been packed as evidenced by their shallower sets of tracks. As for the “back shooters,” they had since fled the scene.
Josh looked over at Gabe and mouthed the words, “What kind of white men did this?”
Gabe shook his head, all the while not taking his eyes off the surrounding forest for any si
gns the killers might return. Seeing nothing and figuring the killers had fled when they heard or saw the trappers riding up, the brothers slowly backed their horses out from the timber, all the time watching to their fronts. As they did, they especially kept their eyes focused to their front in the direction the shod horses had gone. Exiting the dark timber, they turned around and rode back to the dead trappers’ campsite. Leaving Josh still sitting on his horse as a guard against surprise, Gabe loaded the trappers’ furs back onto the dead trapper’s pack animals. Then they took all the dead trappers’ livestock and left the camp before the killers returned.
Back in the draw, the gray jays and ravens squawked their happiness over the many meals the dead elk and men represented for them and their kind. Back in the darkest timber, four horsemen sat quietly on the backs of their horses. Their leader, a large man with a black beard said, “That was a close one, boys. If them two Missouri Constables figured it were us who had killed them trappers, we might be in a hell of a fight right now. However, since they didn’t figure it were us pulling them triggers, we be ok. But by damn, I sure hate losin’ all them furs those boys had trapped and left back at their camp afore we kilt them. Them packs would have served us well on our trip...”
Riding back, Josh and Gabe hurriedly advised Buffalo Calf s waiting small band of the shameful killings. With that, the camp guard was doubled, and now Josh and Gabe found themselves not only in possession of their year’s trappings but those from the two dead trappers as well. A small fortune to be sure. Especially when one realized the Dents were now in possession of eleven heavily loaded pack animals—theirs they had trapped and those traded from the Indians and now those from the unfortunates recently back shot—carrying twenty-five packs of beaver plews—roughly 1,500 plews approximately valued at $13,500, a fortune. Yes, that would be a fortune in furs at Fort Raymond, even in the light of that merchant’s penchant to always buy low and sell high.
