Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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About three o’clock in the morning the horses became uneasy for want of food. Preparatory to an early departure I gathered in a large heap a number of small, fallen pines and soon had an immense fire. It lighted up the cañon with a lurid gloom and mantled the snow-covered trees with a ghastly radiance. The black smoke of the burning pitch rolled in clouds through the atmosphere, which seemed to be choked with the myriad snowflakes. So dense was the storm I could scarcely discern the horses, which stood but a few rods distant. Wading through the snow to the spot where my companions slept, I roused them from their slumbers. I could liken them to nothing but spectres as they burst through their snowy covering and stood half-revealed in the bushes by the light of the blazing pines. It was a scene for an artist. Despite the gloomy forebodings which had filled my mind, at this scene I burst into a fit of loud and irrepressible laughter.

It was but for a moment, for, as if in answer to it, the counterfeited neigh of a horse a few rods below and of another just above me, warned me that the danger I had feared was already upon us. It was the signal and reply of the Indians. Bray and Dougherty grasped their guns, while I rushed to the picket pin, and, seizing the four lariats, pulled in the horses. A moment afterwards, and from behind a thicket of willows just above our camp, there dashed down the cañon in full gallop forty or more of the dreaded Blackfeet. In the light of that dismal fire their appearance was horribly picturesque. Their faces hideous with war paint, their long ebon hair floating to the wind, their heads adorned with bald-eagle feathers, and their knees and elbows daintily tricked out with strips of antelope skin and white feathery skunks’ tails, they seemed like a troop of demons which had just sprung out of the earth, rather than beings of flesh and blood. Each man held a gun in his right hand, guiding his horse with the left. Well-filled quivers and bows were fastened to their shoulders, and close behind the main troop, driven by five or six outriders, followed a herd of fifty or more horses they had just stolen from a company of miners on their way to the Bannack mines, who had encamped for the night at Deer Lodge. These animals were driven hurriedly by our camp, down the cañon, the main troop, meantime, forming into line on the other side of them so as to present an unbroken front of horsemen after they had passed, drawn up for attack. This critical moment we improved by rapidly looping the lariats into the mouths of our horses and bringing our guns to an aim from behind them over their fore-shoulders. As we stood thus, not twenty yards asunder, confronting each other, the chief, evidently surprised that the onslaught lingered, rode hurriedly along the front of his men and with violent gesticulations and much vehement jargon urged them to an instant assault. They strongly expostulated, and by numerous antics and utterances, which I afterwards ascertained meant that their guns were wet and their caps useless, finally persuaded him to resort to the bows and arrows. The chief was very angry, and from the violence of his gestures and threatening manner I expected to see several of the Indians knocked off their horses. When the Indians, in obedience to his command, hung their guns on the pommels of their saddles, and drew their bows, the attack seemed inevitable. Our guns were dry, and we knew that they were good for twenty-four shots and the revolvers in our belts for as many more.