The First Mountain Man (11 page)

11

The Indians became darting shapes in the night, utilizing every bit of cover as they worked their way closer to the fort and the wagons. So far, although two dozen shots had been fired from the defenders, Preacher was the only one to have scored a hit.

“Don't fire until you're sure of a target!” Preacher yelled. “Goddammit, save your powder and shot. This ain't St. Louis. You can't go to the store and buy more.” He dropped back down beside Greybull. “Damn pilgrims anyways. I'd hate to be saddled with guidin' them fools.”

Another fire arrow lanced the night and this one landed on the canvas of a wagon, igniting it almost instantly. Greybull drilled the Indian who fired the arrow and the brave doubled over, mortally wounded from the .54 caliber Hawken.

Men and women ran to put out the fire and the Indians showered them with arrows. One woman was struck in the throat and died horribly, the life gurgling out of her, and a man went down screaming with an arrow in his stomach. Children were laying under their parents' wagons, many of them screaming in fright.

“Welcome to life on the frontier, folks,” Preacher muttered without malice. “I 'spect it ain't at all like the big adventure it was painted to be.”

“They're using ladders to breech the north wall!” a young soldier shouted.

“Did you tell the kitchen people to have lots of boilin' water ready?” Preacher asked his buddy.

Greybull chewed and spat. “Yep.”

“Well?”

“The lieutenant said he wouldn't do nothin' like pourin' no boilin' water on folks. Said that was agin the rules of war.”

“Until that boy grows up, we're gonna be in trouble, Greybull.”

“Yep. Must be two, three hundred Blackfeet out yonder.”

Both men were lifting their rifles to their shoulders.

“At least,” Preacher said.

“Wait a minute,” Greybull said, lowering his rifle. “What the hell's that chantin'?”

Preacher listened for a moment. “Them back over that ridge is singin' their death songs. But ... why? And why the rush to attack us? Ain't none of this makin' no sense, Greybull.”

From out in the darkness, far away from the light of the burning wagon, came the angry shouting voice of a Blackfoot. Greybull and Preacher listened intently to the hard words.

“My sweet Jesus,” Greybull whispered. “Is he sayin' what I think I'm hearin'?”

“Yeah,” Preacher told him, his words hard and grimly offered. “He damn shore is.” Preacher tapped on the logs of the wall. “Can anybody hear me in yonder?” he called.

“Right here, Preacher,” a trapper he knew slightly said. “I heard them words, too.”

“Get to usin' an axe, Jim. Get some men choppin' and make us a space big enough to get folks through and do it quick. And get the lieutenant over here.”

“Right, Preacher.”

Only a few heartbeats passed before the voice of Maxwell-Smith came through the logs. “Yes, Preacher?”

“Now listen to me, Lieutenant,” Preacher said, steel in his words. “I ain't gonna say this but once. Don't let no Injun come over the walls. Don't touch none of them. We got to get all these pilgrims inside the walls and keep the Injuns out. Now you get them goddamn pots filled with water and keep it hot. When they try to come over, you dump it on them. You got all that, Lieutenant?”

“I hear you, Preacher. Boiling water poured on the flesh of those poor wretches out there. But can you give me a reason for the barbaric behavior?”

“Them's their death-songs they's singin' out yonder, boy. The white man's done brought smallpox down on them. Whole villages has been wiped out. And them out yonder got it too. They want to die in battle—but not before they infect us. Now, is that good enough for you?”

“I'll get right on it,” Maxwell-Smith said, his voice filled with horror.

“You do that.” He turned to Greybull. “Them on the other side'll be through in two jigs. Soon as the hole's cut, I'll start workin' them pilgrims over here. We got to do this fast.” He handed him his Hawken. “Little extry firepower, Greybull. I'm gone.”

The wagon was almost burned down to smoldering char as preacher made his way into the knot of men and women.

“They're through!” Greybull called.

“Get to the wall,” Preacher told the first bunch. “Grab what you can and run like hell. Move, people.
Move!”

“What's the meaning of this?” the wagon master confronted him. “I give the orders out here.”

“Not no more, partner,” Preacher told him. “If you want to live, you do what I tell you to do.”

“I don't take orders from you ... you smelly, shaggy reprobate!”

“Then you can go right straight to hell,” Preacher replied. “I ain't got the time to fart around with someone as dumb as you.” He shoved the man out of the way.

The wagonmaster grabbed him by the shoulder and spun Preacher around, his fist drawed back for a blow. He never got the chance to throw it. Preacher put him on the ground, butt first, and a hard left and right to the jaw. Then he went about his business of gathering up those pioneers who would go into the fort.

And not all of them would.

“I don't believe you!” one man said. “And I'm not leaving my wagon out here for the savages to plunder and burn.”

“Then stay here,” Preacher said, and pushed past him. It was cold on the mountain man's part, but he was doing what he felt was necessary, and he didn't have much time. And he also knew what smallpox could do. He'd had it and survived it, as had Greybull. They'd been with some Mandans when it struck their village, and it was a horrible sight to witness.

About half of those in the wagon train chose to leave their wagons and run for the fort. Preacher held several sets of parents at pistol-point while Greybull and two young soldiers forcibly took their young children from them and ran for the fort.

“I'll see you in hell for this!” and man shouted.

“You'll be there 'fore me,” Preacher told him.

Then the enraged Blackfeet struck the fort and there was no time for anything except survival as the infected and sick and dying Indians threw themselves against the thick walls of the fort. They came out of the night in silent waves of fury and hate.

The first wave was repelled by shot. On the heels of that one came another with makeshift ladders. Boiling water was poured on them and they ran shrieking into the night, burned horribly.

Those pilgrims who had refused to leave their wagons fared not well at all. It did not take the Blackfeet long to overwhelm them, and the Indians were in no mood to take prisoners for slavery or barter.

The screaming of those being tortured played hell on the nerves of the defenders inside the fort.

“What are they doing to them?” Edmond asked nervously, standing beside Preacher on a rampart.

“Injuns can get right lively with their torture,” the mountain man replied. “And if they're a mind to, they can make it last for days. Each tribe has its own favorite way of torture, and there ain't none of it very pleasant.”

“What happened to the tame Indians who were living around the fort?”

“They run off 'fore the Blackfeet got here in force.”

Flames from the burning wagons illuminated the night, highlighting the bodies that littered the ground around the walled fort. Moaning from the wounded mingled with the screaming of those being tortured. A man from the wagon train came stumbling out of the night, his head on fire and his hands tied behind his back. His shrieking was hideous.

Preacher lifted his Hawken and shot him dead.

“My God, man!” Edmond said.

“I put him out of his misery,” Preacher said. “They'd gouged out his eyes and set his hair on fire. You ever seen a man who's brains was cooked?”

“Ah ... no.”

“It ain't a nice sight.”

An arrow whizzed between them and fell to the earth on the grounds inside the walls.

“When we whup them,” Preacher said, “and we will do that, eventually, we got a real problem. Those of us that's had the pox has got to go out there and burn them bodies to kill the germs. You been scratched, Edmond?”

“Yes. All of my party received the cowpox.”

“Good. Y'all can help then. Hudson's Bay sent supplies of smallpox vaccine to all its forts. The lieutenant said his people had been vaccined.”

Greybull came hunched over to them. “From what I been able to pick out of the night, the Blackfeet's lost a lot of people. Whole villages wiped out. A Mandan just slipped through and he sayin' that all along the Missouri there ain't nothin' but death. His whole tribe was wiped out. He says that folks is runnin' away from it, headin' west, and that's how it got here so fast. He says that people of his tribe is killin' themselves right and left. Said the talk is it started over at Fort Union. Brought in by someone on a keelboat”

Preacher nodded his head. “Listen to that,” he said, as the chanting and singing grew louder, coming to them from out of the night. “Them Blackfeet's gone crazy. They're workin' themselves up into a killin' rage.”

“Can't say as I blame them,” Greybull replied. “I'd rather die quick than linger in pain for days with the pox, havin' the skin rot off me.”

Edmond shuddered. “You are rather graphic in your description, sir.” He paused. “A thought just occurred to me. Those savages we encountered the night before we reached the fort. Do you suppose ... ?”

“Yeah, they probably had it, or suspected they did. But you all been vaccined, so you ain't got nothin' to worry about. What you got to worry about is right out yonder.”

The singing and chanting stopped. The sudden silence gathered all around them.

“What does that mean?” Edmond asked.

“It means they comin' straight at us,” Preacher said. “Like right about now!” He lifted his Hawken and blew a hole in the chest of a running brave.

The ground on all sides of the fort was suddenly transformed into a mass of charging Blackfeet, some of them carrying makeshift ladders. They threw ladders against the log walls and began climbing up. Buckets and pots containing hot water were dumped on the Indians, scalding them. They flung themselves off the ladders, screaming in pain, running away into the night. Men were firing straight down from the ramparts, the heavy caliber rifles and pistols inflicting horrible damage on the Indians at close range. The cool night air became thick and choking with gunsmoke and the stench of death.

Although outnumbered by at least twenty to one—and probably more than that—the defenders of the fort held the high ground, so to speak, and fought savagely, once again breaking the Indian attack.

Lieutenant Maxwell-Smith made his way along the ramparts to Preacher. “While it is quiet, I am going to stand half of my men down for a rest and some tea.”

“Good idea. They damn sure earned a rest,” he complimented the young officer. “We just might have broken their spirit this last charge. Them Blackfeet might think their medicine has turned bad and fall back to ponder on it some.”

“I'll have the men in the towers keep a sharp eye out.”

Preacher watched the young man leave and said, “I think he learned something about the frontier this night.”

Edmond mopped his grimy, sweaty face with a handkerchief. “I know I certainly did.”

* * *

Most of those inside the fort managed to catch an hour or so of sleep that night. The Indians made no more charges against them. They settled back to harass them with arrows and an occasional gunshot, for many of them did not have rifles, and those that did were not very good shots, not having sufficient powder and shot to practice.

The sun rose to a sight of mangled bodies on all sides of the fort. More than a dozen of those men and women who had refused to leave their wagons had been stripped naked, tortured, then tied to a wagon wheel and burned alive. Even the children had been killed, a sure sign of the Indian's rage over the white man bringing his deadly diseases to them.

“I 'spect we can salvage 'bout half them wagons,” Preacher opined. He glanced at Richard, looking out grim-faced at the carnage that lay before them. “Any clothing found out yonder will have to be handled careful-like, with a stick, and boiled 'fore anyone uses it.”

“Yes. Have the Indians gone?”

“I don't know. I doubt it. Mad as they is, I don't 'spect they'll give up too easy.” He was studying the body of a Blackfoot that lay on the ground at the base of the walled fort. “Cut his claws off,” Preacher muttered, just as Greybull walked over to them. “You noticed that, Greybull?”

“What?”

“Them Blackfeet done cut their claws off 'fore this battle. Strange.”

“Claws?” Richard asked. “Claws? Like in animal claws?”

“Thumbnails,” Preacher explained. “Blackfeet men let their thumbnails grow until they crook like a claw. Something else, too. See them dead ponies out yonder? Look at the symbols painted on the necks. Them's the ponies of war party leaders. We just may have broke this bunch. They've pulled 'way back now, busy electin' new chiefs and leaders.”

Preacher glanced to his left. Lieutenant Maxwell-Smith was standing silently, watching him and listening intently. The young officer had learned many things during the past twenty-four hours. One important thing was that these disreputable-looking mountain men knew what they were talking about when it came to Indians and how to fight them, and if he was going to survive out here among the savage heathens, he'd better shut his mouth and listen and learn.