by Terry Grosz
“Please be careful,” said Birdsong. “I have had bad feelings from the evil spirits ever since you and the boys discovered those unknown horse tracks. I don’t know why I should, but I just have a feeling of bad things to happen.”
Gathering her body, now bulging and heavy with the baby, into his arms, Harlan said, “Don’t let your Indian way of life scare you. I won’t let the evil spirits get you, not as long as I am alive and nearby to protect you. You have Timber at hand to warn you and your firearms in case things get serious. Martha, the bell mule, will let you know if anyone comes within seeing distance. If you like, go stay with White Bear and his clan. They would love to see all of you. But when you do, be sure to take some gifts of coffee, sugar, tobacco, and salt.”
“Maybe you are right,” Birdsong said. “This time when you are gone we will visit White Bear’s clan. I will feel safer that way, with the baby and all. Autumn Flower and I will go visit, so when you come home, you will know where to find us. We will come back once a day to water and feed our horses and mules.” She gave Harlan her usual beautiful smile.
Harlan gave Birdsong a loving pat on the bottom as Runs Fast let Autumn Flower go from his arms as well. Big Eagle and Winter Hawk just smiled from atop their horses.
It sure is good to be part of such a loving family, Winter Hawk thought proudly.
Entering the dark timber, Harlan, ever mindful of “the way,” kept his eyes peeled and listened to the wildlife around him for any sign of danger. He wouldn’t have said as much to Birdsong, but he too had felt a certain uneasiness, though it was nothing he could put his finger on.
The trapping was now at hand, and he put the bad thoughts out of his mind for the duration, blaming them on his worry about being a father for the first time.
Approaching their first snare, they discovered that it held a beautiful pine marten. For the next two days, the men found that their traps and snares had managed to catch numerous high- class furbearing animals. At night, they would sit around a small campfire designed not to draw any unwanted attention while they skinned and hooped the hides. By day three, the weather had turned threatening once again, with numerous banks of dark gray clouds stacking up in the northwest, from whence most of their storms came.
Realizing this could be the hard winter weather they had been expecting for months, Harlan told the boys, “Saddle up. We are heading for home in time to beat that weather, which can’t be more than two or three days out.”
Backtracking their trap-line, they sprang the remaining snares and deadfalls. In the process, they also picked up their valuable leg-hold traps for next season’s trapping. As they headed out after finishing, Harlan was pleased. They were ahead of the storm, their pack animals were loaded with numerous high-grade furs, and none of the men had had any mishaps this time.
Rounding the meadow by their camp, Harlan was surprised not to see smoke coming from the cabins’ fireplaces. After all, the wives had known they would be home this day. Guess the women are still at White Bear’s camp, he thought.
Then he noticed that all the horses and mules were in the corral, looking a little out of sorts with impatient hoof stomping, eating the wood off the railings, and the like. That be strange, he thought.
Stepping off his horse, he walked over to the animals. The hobbles were still where he had left them three days earlier. That meant they hadn’t been used. If that was the case, the horses hadn’t been let out to feed or water since the men had left to go trapping three days earlier. That would explain their strange behavior in the corral, Harlan thought as worry began to build. That is not like those women to neglect our livestock because they are our lifeline, he thought with more than a little concern now welling up from deep inside.
The boys checked out the cabins and found all to be intact as they had left them. Then the men fell to hobbling the horses and mules in the corral to let them out to feed and water. They also hobbled their pack mules after unloading the furs and equipment from their recent trapping trip. Off those mules went to join their buddies, now happily feeding and watering in the meadow. Then the men remounted their tired horses and, without a word, rode toward White Bear’s camp five miles to the east with more than a little apprehension.
Coming off the prairie rim overlooking White Bear’s camp nestled in the creek bottom below, the men were shocked at what greeted their eyes.
Lying before them was White Bear’s camp, or what was left of it. All the tepees had been burned, and clothing and equipment were scattered everywhere, as were the bodies of men, women, and children and the camp dogs.
Racing off the prairie rim and into the creek bottom, the four men stormed into camp, vaulted off their horses, and began searching among the bodies for their loved ones. Big Eagle found White Bear. His hands had been cut off, and he had been disemboweled and scalped. Next to him lay his wife and several other of the camp’s women who had run to the chief’s tent for protection.
Then Winter Hawk yelled. At his feet lay Timber, shot several times and filled with arrows. It was obvious that he had died defending his mistress. Next to him lay Birdsong. Her pistol was empty, and her knife hand was bloodied where she had obviously stabbed someone in the fight.
By her side lay her sister, Autumn Flower, whose pistol had been fired as well. Both women’s bodies had been mutilated, and their babies had been cut from their bellies and tossed aside. Both babies were boys. They never found Autumn Flower’s daughter. It seemed that every one of White Bear’s immediate clan, about twenty-five in number, had been slaughtered by a surprise hostile Indian attack.
Harlan remembered Birdsong’s concern over the evil spirits and the feeling he’d had of that he might be holding the love of his life for the last time before they’d left camp that morning. Runs Fast just stood with tears streaming down his face, saying nothing.
Winter Hawk was in shock and starting to tremble as he had as a boy after the attack on his village. Then Big Eagle yelled! He had discovered the body of the love of his life and turned away, vomiting. She too had been mutilated, but not before she had been ravaged many times.
Harlan was numb, raging, and stunned all at the same time. Never had he seen so much absolute destruction of a camp and the people living within. There wasn’t one person who was not mutilated, scalped, or shot full of arrows.
Standing in the center of this butchery, Harlan found a towering rage building inside like he had never felt before. He wanted to kill those responsible for creating this scene, and he wanted the killing to take a long time and to be of the most violent kind. He found that he was incapable of tears, just the kind of vengeance, welling up inside like stinging bile, that is wreaked only on the most evil of things—and then only after asking God’s forgiveness in advance.
With few words, the men begin burying their dead after wrapping them in buffalo robes. They placed the bodies of the women and their children in a nearby stand of oak trees, up off the ground and facing to the east, together as sisters for eternity.
Then the men heard the sound of horses coming across the shortgrass prairie. Grabbing their Hawkens, to a man they thought, If the horses belong to the men who did this, they will meet their maker here and now!
Over the ridge rode a band of Crow buffalo hunters, led by Limps-Ahead-of-His-Horses, who were coming to White Bear’s village to see if anyone wanted to go hunting. They were not prepared for what they saw and almost turned on their trapper friends, thinking they were responsible for the carnage, until they realized what had happened. A runner was sent back to their village to warn the others of the deadly events in White Bear’s village and to send relatives back to help in burying the dead.
Harlan, along with his boys, attempted to trace the signs of the attack before the sign was wiped out by the arrival of more Crow from nearby villages. Soon they discovered the route of attack and the place where the killers had holed up until daylight greeted them on that fateful day.
They had ridden over the rim and right into W
hite Bear’s camp before anyone could get organized and, being of superior numbers, slaughtered everyone. From examination of the ground, Harlan deduced that there had been about thirty Indians in the raiding party—and eight others riding shod horses!
The arrows in the bodies were those of the Gros Ventre, and many of the dead, including the women, had been shot at close range. As near as Harlan could tell, the trail was two days old at the most. Without a word, Harlan remounted his horse and, with the boys trailing, rode over to Limps-Ahead-of-His-Horses.
“Do not send a war party after the killers. The boys and I will hunt them down if possible and kill every one of them. We will leave them in such a condition that even the wolves will not find enough to eat,” Harlan uttered though clenched teeth. As an afterthought, he asked, “Would you send someone over to care for our stock? When I return, I will see that this person is richly rewarded.”
A nod from Limps-Ahead-of-His Horses settled that deal.
Not another word was spoken, just a handshake of understanding, and the meeting was over. Then Harlan and the boys headed back to their cabins without another word. There they exchanged their jaded horses for fresh ones and saddled them for the hunt. They added extra powder and bullets to their bags of possibles, quickly filled the saddlebags with jerky, and tied several sacks of grain to each horse’s saddle horn.
This trip would be a hard one, and the horses had to hold up on the long trail. The key to pushing the horses was the high-energy grain they now carried. Each horse was checked to make sure it had good shoes, and the men were ready for the trail. Each man carried two horse pistols and an extra Hawken. In addition, each wore a long-bladed gutting knife. Now that they were fully prepared for the trail, their eyes met, and that was enough.
Heading cross-country on an intercept course, Harlan and the boys soon cut across the track of the killers. They hadn’t gone more than a mile on the cold track when they ran across the shallow graves of those killed in the battle at White Bear’s camp. Digging up the eight graves, Harlan and the boys scalped all of the bodies. Harlan noticed one man with his belly ripped open by a knife. Birdsong had her revenge, he thought grimly.
They left the bodies exposed for the animals to have their turn, which in accordance with Indian tradition forbade those dead from ever roaming the Happy Hunting Grounds because their bodies would not be complete after the animals had finished.
Then they continued along that trail, and hard. After all, they had several days to make up.
That night, the pursuers cold-camped after heavily graining their horses. There was no open fire, and they quietly ate jerky that had been prepared in happier days. It was apparent that the killers had not expected pursuit because they were taking their time as they headed almost due north toward what Harlan figured might be the Judith Gap. The spacing of the tracks showed that their quarry had slowed their horses to a walk to save the livestock and themselves from exhaustion.
The men didn’t get much sleep that night because of the family memories and what lay ahead. Four against twenty remaining men was tough odds, but every one of the pursuers welcomed the chance to close with those who had destroyed their little family.
By daylight, the men were hard on the trail once again as it casually continued north along many well-worn Indian and animal trails. Harlan’s party doggedly continued the pursuit.
Kneeling by his horse, Harlan checked the tracks and horse droppings for freshness. Looking up to the boys, he said, “Maybe one day old. They sure aren’t in any hurry. We best make sure we aren’t walking into an ambush. We will start out wide and continue to cut back and forth across their trail. That way we can continue after them and not be led into an ambush.”
The eyes of the men on the horses agreed.
Harlan swung back into the saddle and headed out at an angle, not directly on the trail in case someone was smart enough to watch their backs. Three hours later, the four men cut back to the trail and crossed it where the Indians and possibly their white partners had camped. There the tracks told another story. The killers had rested, and the ashes of their fires were still warm. But those riding the shod horses had split away and headed due west toward what is today White Sulphur Springs, Montana, and beaver-trapping country.
Big Eagle checked the Indians’ tracks and, looking up at Harlan, said, “Four to six hours old.”
Harlan sat on his horse for a second and then said, “Those eight are probably renegade trappers heading for the beaver grounds in the Big Belt Mountains. My guess is that is where they will hole up, especially with winter coming on. The Indians, on the other hand, will continue heading north to their stomping grounds in the hope that any Crows chasing them will be intimidated, since it is now the country of the Blackfoot, and will turn around and go back. My vote is to catch and punish the Gros Ventre and let others of their kind see what happens when they venture south. As for the trappers, if the snow doesn’t get too deep, we can run them to ground in their winter camp later. Unless any of you have different thoughts, that is my vote.”
***
Coming up on the south bank of the Musselshell River, Harlan and the boys smelled wood smoke! Quickly hiding their horses, Runs Fast and Winter Hawk sneaked up to the river’s edge and peered into several campfires thirty yards away, surrounded by Gros Ventre cooking supper in a heavy growth of willows. There were eighteen men eating and two guarding their horse herd.
None looked like they were really on guard, the boys reported back to Harlan and Big Eagle. It was clear that pursuit was not on their minds this far north.
“We will wait until early morning, when they are sleeping the soundest, and then crawl into their midst and kill as many as we can before they kill us or run away,” Harlan said slowly.
He spoke in such a way that the dark meaning of his words and the violence to follow would not be lost on the boys. This group of Indians had crossed the line, as far as Harlan was concerned. They had ripped the hearts and souls out of his family, and now it was time to return the favor. Many would pay for killing Birdsong, Autumn Flower, and their children.
The two Gros Ventre guarding the horses died in their own blood gurgling from deeply slit throats before they even realized there was any danger. Falling asleep on guard duty had ensured them a long sleep! Runs Fast and Big Eagle held their heads and kept their mouths shut until they quit wiggling so they would not make any noise and arouse the rest of the camp.
Then the four trappers crawled in from one side of the sleeping Indians by the first campfire and with their knives commenced quietly cutting throats, holding each dying man still before moving on to the next in line. Soon the men were smeared with spurting arterial blood. Nine Indians, sleeping off a long ride and a big meal of venison, died around the campfire that morning.
Shifting their attention to the second campfire several yards away, where another nine Indians lay huddled together for warmth, the men rose to their knees as if on command and quietly shouldered their rifles.
“Hey!” yelled Harlan.
The Indians jumped up en masse from a sound sleep, only to be met by the blazing ends of four Hawkens and then eight horse pistols, quickly fired at very close range. None survived the onslaught, falling back and dying in the sleeping skins from which they rose.
Reloading their weapons in case there were more Indians in the group or others within hearing distance, the men waited as their emotions ran wild for more killing. Upon seeing no one, the four men rose in unison and, as if following an unspoken command, scalped every man around the two campfires and the two by the horse herd. Then they cut off their man-hoods and shoved the organs into each man’s pried-open mouth.
They chopped off the heads with their tomahawks and dumped them into the shallow edges of the Musselshell River for anyone to find. Then, off came the bodies’ arms and legs, which were thrown into a pile with a stack of firewood over the top, which was then set afire. The torsos were stacked alongside trees as if they had crawled that
far before dying, but not before their hearts were ripped out and placed on sharpened sticks for all to see.
With the carnage complete, the men set some of the Indian’s venison on sticks around the campfires and ate a hearty breakfast. Still covered with drying blood on their hair, faces, and clothing, the four men made a hideous scene.
That is good, though, thought Harlan, because they were now trailing twenty Gros Ventres ponies as they started toward where he figured the trappers involved in the killing had holed up.
Now they could ride even faster because of the fresh mounts, and they did so, coming within twenty miles of where Harlan figured the trappers might have made their winter camp that first day. If any Gros Ventres or Blackfoot wanted to tangle with this group of grim mounted men, all they had to do was look at them—four determined-looking mountain men, all smeared with blood—and ask themselves if they really wanted a part of that terror.
But the killing of the rogue trappers was not to be. Mother Nature brought an end to the killing with two feet of heavy, fresh snow and foreshadowed a like storm on the way.
Winter is finally here, and in all its fury, thought Harlan as he sat on his horse looking in the direction he needed to go to get at those riding the shod horses. But from what snow lay on the ground now and what was possibly still coming, he decided against continuing the pursuit.
This was not the time to get caught in four feet of snow in the dead of winter in the high country, with just a few pounds of jerky among them and only several blankets apiece. They would have to come back in the spring, when the weather was better and the suspected white men were still trapping before the beaver went out of their prime.
He discussed the matter with the boys, and they also decided that it would be best to come back in the spring and settle up with those riding the eight shod horses, who had participated in the slaughter at White Bear’s camp. Each man took one hard look in the direction their quarry had gone and resolved in his own way on a return that would be appropriate.
