The men spent two or three hours with their weapons. They examined the parts, cleaned and greased them, and wiped the barrels as gently as they would have touched the mechanism of a watch. Their knives they honed on fine-grained hard stones that they had saturated with goose oil, and then stropped them on soft leather. To their horses—and every man was superbly mounted—they gave a devoted care that they never gave to themselves, examining their hoofs, teeth, hams, and neck and shoulder muscles; searching under their flanks and up against their scroturns for ticks and other bloodsuckers; letting them drink only in streams clear of heavy clays and poisonous silts; and pasturing them in the most luxuriant spots. If four hundred Blackfeet warriors had moved against them their chance at life would have depended almost entirely on the strong beasts under them. A mountain man thought of his horse and his gun and knife as parts of himself—an extension of his reach and a trebling of his speed.
When the twenty-three men in this comitiva felt that no more mountain men were coming they spent another night here, waiting for storm, with sentinels in three-hour watches at the four corners. The next morning they saddled their beasts, secured their bedrolls and fixens behind their saddles, and headed north down the Missouri. Ahead of the main body went three scouts, and a mile behind it the sharp-eyed Dave Black brought up the rear. A few of them, with Dan as their spokesman, had proposed that after this band was wiped out they should push north and find another band; but the cooler heads said no, for they knew that the massacre would arouse the nation to wild frenzies. The squaws would slash their flesh and spill blood over themselves, and shriek and yell with such insane furies that the braves, like wasps spilled out of a nest, would rush around in all directions, their eyes wild for sign of something to kill. After all, Bill Williams would have said, if alive and with them, their job was to avenge the insults on the head of a mountain brother. After that they would slip silently away down the valleys and through the forests, in all directions but north, leaving the red hornets to wear themselves out in their tantrums. The important thing, they had all agreed, was to let one man live so that he could carry the news to his people. How they would shriek and gouge themselves when the lone survivor, his skull bald and red, told them what had happened! The first night out they made camp near the foothills of the Big Belt Mountains. McNees slipped in about midnight to report that the band was still there against the bluff but showed signs of getting ready to move. Their lookouts were as before, one varmint a mile from camp on the northeast, another on the southeast, and possibly a third on the bluff. The wind was from the northwest. He kallated that it was about ten miles to the Indian camp.
The three sentinels would have to be taken out. The choice of executioners was given to Sam. He knew that it would be foolish to call for volunteers; they would all volunteer. Knowing that Dan was dying to be one of them, he assigned to him the varmint on the southeast. Because the one on the bluff would be the most difficult of the three to ambush he gave him to Three-Finger. He then looked round him at the men and thought he saw in the night gloom a special eagerness in the eyes of David Black. "All right, Dave, the one on the northeast is yours."
It was a dark night with wolves baying and the hoot owl forecasting storm. All the men lay down but they were all awake. Listening, the only sounds Sam could hear were from a night bird, a wolf, and an owl. Two hours later the party rode two thirds of the way and concealed their horses in an aspen thicket. The sky was low and dark, and huge drops of rain were falling when the men resumed their journey. How wonderful it would be, Sam thought, looking up at the dark wet sky, if at the moment of attack the Creator would fill the world with a thunderous theme of vengeance, with chords like those that opened the Fifth!
They moved forward almost as silently as the wolf, until they were met by the returning scouts. McNees had told them that he and the other two would need only a half hour. Well, mebbe, Sam thought; Dan was not as fast as the other two. They were still two miles from the Indian camp when Sam, now leading the twenty, was astonished to see a tall figure come out of night shadows, hesitate a moment, and advance toward him. It was McNees, with a wet scalp in his hand; This was not the way Sam had planned it, and he was wondering about Dave and Dan, when McNees began to whisper around the group that everything was ready for the huggin. Dan and Dave were about a mile ahead, waiting. They had found all three sentinels dozing, and had one hand over their mouth and a knife through them before they could move. The camp was sound asleep. There were dogs in the camp, McNees said; their horses were southwest around the base of the bluff and no guard was with them. They would approach from the southeast, for the wind that way would be in their faces and those asleep would hear only the hurrycane. Waugh! Sam was thinking: no wonder this man was known as one of the three best scouts in the West, the other two being Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. Still whispering, McNees said that as they approached there would be five tents in a row, facing them; about twenty feet beyond them was a larger tent, in which the chief would be snoring and dreaming of glory. Around it, on the south in a semicircle, were nine smaller tepees. Some of the varmints were not under cover, and because the rain might arouse them it was best to hurry along. By the time McNees had ceased whispering the men had in mind a map of the situation and they knew that in the five skin tents facing the east were the chief’s mightiest warriors. Every man but Sam, whose mind was on the chief, hoped to be the first to reach the five tents.
They moved forward in a drizzle of rain. After a mile Dan came in from darkness and joined them. When about three hundreds yards from the camp the party halted; the men would now creep forward as silently as the wolf, for each of them wore three pairs of moccasins. Each had a revolver in his belt and a long Bowie. After fifty yards Dave Black rose as if out of the earth and slipped forward with them. When Sam and the dozen men abreast of him were about a hundred and fifty feet from the first tents they stopped, resting on one knee and a palm; and Sam looked round him at the men behind. Not even the breathing of a single man could have been heard but in any moment they expected to hear the dogs explode in alarm and fury. For another fifty feet they all slunk soundlessly forward, and then Sam straightened, a knife flashing in his hand. This was the signal. In the next moment the camp and the mountains behind it and the whole earth roundabout were shattered by a war cry that stiffened every sleeping Indian. In almost the same instant the men rushed forward at full speed and the camp’s dogs came awake. For a few fatal moments the redmen were drugged by sleep and shocked by terror, and during those moments it was all over for most of them. Not one Indian in live knew what struck him.
Elk Horns knew. Sam took care of that. While the horrible cries were still echoing in the mountain night Sam in a flash was between two of the sentinel tents and over to the chief. The redman came up fast and met Sam at the flap door. While racing forward Sam had returned the knife to his belt because at close quarters he preferred to light with his hands. At the tent door he seized the man by his two arms and wrenched him with such force that the hatchet fell from his hand. In the same moment Sam spat in his face and then flung him headlong backward across his shoulder. He swung then to a guard who had rushed out of the tent and drove his knife through him; and the next instant he seized the chief, brought him to his feet with a jolt that almost fractured his leg bones, again spat in his face, and slapped a red cheek so hard with the flat of his hand that the chief almost fell. "It’s me!" Sam roared in the helpless man’s face, and again uttering the dreadful war cry, he seized the chief with both hands just under his ribs and heaved him up and straight over his head. He was then on top of him, bloody knife in his hand, and while the stunned chief lay helpless Sam took his scalp.