It was an endless chain of riders, shuttling past the fort, and shooting--but that did not work.

The Blackfeet arrows and bullets caught the horses, and once in a while a rider; and soon there were ten Crows down.

The Crows quit, to rest their horses, and to talk. Their women were wailing still more loudly. War was hard on the women, too. For every relative killed, they had to cut off a finger joint, besides gashing their faces and hands with knives.

In their little fort, the Blackfeet were as boldly defiant as ever.

"Come and take us!" they gibed. "Where are the Crow men? We thought we saw Crow men among you. Come and take us, but you will never take us alive!"

"What will be done now?" the white men queried of a black man who had joined them, in the clump of cedars.

He was not all black. He was half white, one quarter negro and one quarter Cherokee. He had lived over twenty years in the Indian country of the upper Missouri River; mainly with the Crows. Edward Rose had been his name, when young; but now he was a wrinkled, stout old man, called Cut-nose, and looked like a crinkly-headed Indian.

"The Crows are losing too many warriors. They have no stomach for that kind of work," answered the old squaw-man.

The Crow chiefs and braves were seated in a circle, near the cedars, and listening to the speakers who stood up, one after another.

"Our marrow-bones are broken," some a.s.serted. "The enemy is in a fort; we are outside. We will lose more men than he. Let us draw off; and when he is in the open, we can then attack as we please."

"He is few; we are many. Our slain warriors and their women cry for vengeance," a.s.serted others. "We will be called cowards if we retreat.

If we charge all together we may lose a few braves, but there will be no Blackfeet left to laugh at us."

These seemed to be the voices that carried. The pipe was pa.s.sed around the circle, every man puffed at it, and the council broke up in a tremendous yelling.

Now the end of the Blackfeet loomed large. Ahorse and afoot the Crows ma.s.sed, to charge from below and on either flank. Their chiefs hastened hither and thither, urging them. The women and children shrieked encouragement.

In their little fort the Blackfeet also listened to their chiefs. They showed not the slightest sign of fear. Their fierce faces glared over the ramparts. Their weapons were held firmly.

The Crows had aroused themselves to such a pitch that they acted half insane. Forward they charged in howling ma.s.ses--but the bullets and arrows pelted them thickly, more warriors fell--they scattered and ran away. The Blackfeet hooted them.

This made old Cut-nose mad. He hastened out to where the Crows were collected in doubt what next to do, and climbed upon a rock, that they all might see him.

"Listen!" he shouted. "You act as if you expected to kill the enemy with your noise. Your voices are big and your hearts are small. These white men see that the Crows cannot protect their hunting grounds; they will not trade with a nation of cowards and women; they will trade with the Blackfeet, who own the country. The Blackfeet will go home and tell the people that three thousand Crows could not take ninety warriors. After this no nation will have anything to do with the Crows. I am ashamed to be found among the Crows. I told the white men that you could fight. Now I will show you how black men and white men can fight."

And he leaped from his rock, and without glancing behind him he ran for the fort. The Crows did not delay an instant. Pellmell they rushed after him, caught up with him, swarmed against the brush and rock walls--the Blackfeet met them stanchly, and gave way not an inch--and the fighting was terrible.

But over the barricade poured the Crows. In a moment the whole interior was a dense ma.s.s of Indians, engaged hand to hand, and every one yelling until, as said the white men, "The noise fairly lifted the caps from our heads."

Guns and hatchets and clubs and knives rose and fell. The Crow women were pressing to the outskirts, to kill the wounded enemy. Gradually the weight of the Crows forced the Blackfeet back. The Blackfeet began to emerge over the upper end of the fort--their faces still to the foe.

Presently all who might escape, were outside--but their enemies surrounded them at once. The Blackfeet remaining were not many. They never faltered nor signed surrender. They only sang their death chants; and forming in close order they moved along the ridge like one man, cutting a way with their knives.

By the half dozen they dropped; even those who dropped, fought until they were dead. Soon the platoon was merely a squad; the squad melted to a spot; there was a swirl, covering the spot; and the spot had been washed out.

Not a Blackfoot was left, able to stand. The wounded who had lost their weapons hurled taunts, as they lay helpless, until the Crows finished them also. Truly had the Blackfeet yelled: "Come and take us!

But you will never take us alive!"

This night there was much mourning in the Crow camp. Thirty chiefs and braves had been killed, twice that number wounded, and many horses disabled. No prisoner had been brought in, to pay by torture. The Blackfeet nation would look upon the fight as their victory.

So the Crow dead were buried; and into each grave of chief or brave were placed his weapons and the shaved off mane and tail of his best horse--for every hair would become a horse for him, in the spirit world.

CHAPTER XXI

THE STRONG MEDICINE OF KONATE (1839)

THE STORY OF THE KIOWA MAGIC STAFF

The Kiowas are of the great Athapascan family of Indians. In their war days they ranged from the Platte River of western Nebraska down into New Mexico and Texas. But their favorite hunting grounds lay south of the Arkansas River of western Kansas and southeastern Colorado.

It was a desert country, of whity-yellow sand and sharp bare hills, with the Rocky Mountains distant in the west, and the only green that of the trees and brush along the water-courses. Nevertheless it was a very good kind of country.

It had plenty of buffalo. The timber and the streams supplied winter shelter. The wagon-road of the white merchants, between the Missouri River and Santa Fe of New Mexico, ran through the middle of it and furnished much plunder. In the south, where lay Comanche land and Apache land, there were Mexican settlements that furnished horses.

With the Comanches and Apaches, and with the Cheyennes and Arapahos north, the Kiowas were friends. To the p.a.w.nees they were enemies, and their name carried dread through many years of fighting.

Now in the summer of 1839, twenty Kiowa warriors left their village near the Arkansas River in present southern Kansas, to go down across Comanche country and get horses and mules from the Pasunke, or the Mexicans of El Paso, which is on the Rio Grande River border between northwestern Texas and Mexico. However, in those days all that region was Mexico.

The head chief of the party was old Do-has-an, or Bluff. But he did not command. Gua-da-lon-te, or Painted-red, was the war chief.

Dohasan would take command only in case Gua-da-lon-te was killed.

Among the warriors there were Dagoi, and Kon-a-te, whose name means "Black-tripe."

After several days" travel horseback clear across New Mexico they came to El Paso town, where many goods were stored on the way between New Mexico and Old Mexico, and where the people got rich by trading and by making wine from grapes. But they could see soldiers guarding El Paso; so they did not dare to charge in and gather horses and mules from the frightened Pasunke.

Dohasan, who was wise as well as brave, advised against it.

"Another time," he said. "We are too few, and we are a long way from home. Let us go, and come again. Maybe on the way tip we will meet with luck among the other villages."

They rested only the one night, and turned back, thinking that they had not been discovered. At the end of a day"s journey through a bad, waterless land, they halted and camped by a spring, of which they knew.

It was a big rock-sink or round, deep basin, with, a pool of water at the bottom, and a cave that extended under a shelf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Young Kiowa girl (missing from book)]

The Mexican soldiers must have struck their trail, or perhaps had followed them from El Paso; for early in the morning there was a sudden shooting from all around, and much yelling. Bullets whined and spatted, and horses screamed and fell over.

"Into the cave!" shouted Painted-red. "Quick!"

Hustled by old Bluff and Painted-red, into the cave they bolted.

n.o.body had been hurt, and the soldiers were afraid to venture in after them, but right speedily they found themselves badly off.

The soldiers camped along the edge of the well, above, so as to kill them by thirst and hunger. Only in the darkness might the Kiowas, two or three at a time, crawl out of the cave, gulp a few swallows from the pool, maybe slash a strip of horse-meat, and scuttle in again.

While doing this, Dagoi was shot in the leg, so that he could not walk.

In a couple of days the dead horses began to decay, for the sun was very hot. The smell grew sickening. The flesh was sickening. One or two of the dead horses lay in the pool, and the water got sickening.

The Mexican soldiers stayed close and watchful, and yelled insults in Spanish.