Someone asked why the varmints were not taken to camp and tied up until after breakfast. Let the red niggers think about it awhile. Sam said all right, they would do that and then send them on their way; and he turned them over to Cy and Charley, who spoke a smattering of Indian tongues. The men then mounted Indian ponies and rode to their camp; and behind them on horses, their feet tied together with leather ropes under the horses’ bellies, and their hands bound, came the two prisoners. Hunters returned from the hills with the choicest portions of elk and buffalo; fires were built; and great roasts were hung from tripods, and thick steaks were laid on chokecherry limbs over red embers. Sam, Hank, and Bill were making hot biscuits. A dozen of the men were out in the vales nd over the hills, gathering roots and wild fruits.
After they had eaten over a hundred pounds of flesh, with biscuits and berries, and each had drunk a quart of strong coffee, they sat back, chewing tobacco or puffing pipes. Bill took the pipestem from his teeth and, like an Indian, made a sign with the pipe at the earth and the sky. It was a cardinal's wonder, he said, that Sam didden bust the chief wide open, though as it was he done him plenty bad. He doubted the varmint would ever make it to his people; some of his innards might be split open inside. Sangre de Cristo! Jack said, and turned red with anger. Did they pet the pisened wolf because they felt sorry for him? Thar warn’t no mercy in these red critters and for his own part he’d feel oneasy if this chief was turned loose. He would arouse the hull nation against them. Would the varmints figger the chief had been freed because he was a greater chief than any white chief? And Sam dotta know that if Elk Horns was turned loose he would be on his trail night and day till the last river ran dry. Why didn’t they sell him to him the Crows?
The proposal caught the fancy of a few of the men: Elk Horns captured Sam to sell him to the Crows and Sam had turned the tables on him. Waugh! That would larn them to stay on their own range.
For a full minute Sam puffed his pipe and considered the matter. He didn’t want to offend these men who had come a long way and risked their lives for him: but he didn’t want the Crows to put a wounded man to fiendish torture and death. Whether if he turned the chief loose there would be any gratitude in him he did not know. This Indian might pursue him night and day as long as he lived but Sam was thinking of the eyes of the youngster dying in the river.
"No, I guess not," he said at last. "We'll send him back and if he wants to come after me I’ll be ready for him." He looked over at the two men bound to a tree. "Bring them over here."
The moment men moved toward the two Indians they began their death song. Dan was looking at the Indian horses; he wanted the chief’s horse and all the men knew it. Most of them felt that Dan should have the horse, and the chief too, because for years he had roamed the mountains and prairies with his skinned head blistering or freezing in sun and winds. The chief’s horse was a handsome spirited black. Knowing how the men felt, Sam said Dan could have the beast, and at once Dan saddled and mounted him and sat proud and bone-bald and ready for war.
As the two Indians were brought to him Sam called Cy and Charley over. He told them to tell these two redmen that they would be sent back to their people; and they would tell their people that if ever again they captured or tried to capture a mountain man the mountain men would make war on them till there wouldn’t be left as much as a sick old woman in all their lands. "Be sure they understand you." While Cy and Charley spoke, by turns, in signs and Indian words, Sam studied the two Indian faces. In the face of the young buck he saw only what seemed to be amazement; in the face of the chief only sick sullen smoldering contempt and hatred. Maybe he should have given him to Dan after all. Sam had been thinking that as a gesture of kindness he would put the man’s shoulder bone back in its socket before sending him on his way but he now said to hell with it. A face as ferocious and evil as that deserved nothing. They were now to tell this chief that if he wanted to fight Sam anywhere any time he was not to skulk around like a cowardly coyote; he was to come out like a warrior and a brave man, into the open, where they would fight it out. Be sure that he understood it. "Tell him he’s to come any day and the sooner the better." Again Sam studied the chief’s bloody face. The expression now was not all sullen hate; Sam thought he saw fear, and he told himself that he would never see this chief again. The man’s fighting will had been broken. What an abject pitiable thing he would be, enduring for the remainder of his life the jeers and contempt of his people. Sam guessed it would have been more merciful to have killed him.
Without knife, gun, or parcel of food the two Indians headed north, afoot, and twenty-three whitemen stood in a group and watched them go, as long as their red skulls were in sight. By noon the wolves and buzzards would be stripping the corpses. By tomorrow or the day after the largest Blackfeet village would be like an overturned wasp nest.
The men rode together to the Three Forks area and from there, singly or in pairs or threes, they went southwest, south, southeast, or east, with a wave of the hand and the words, "Watch yer topknot!" or "I’ll see ye at the next rondyvoo!" Come another spring they would not all be alive, but it was that way with mountain men, it was their way of life and they would have willingly lived no other. Hank and Bill rode into the east with Sam. Bill said Mick Boone was brokenhearted because his bay had not been among the horses. Sam said he was awfully sorry about that. Maybe he should have kept the chief and traded him for the horse, and for his guns and knife, and for the lock of hair from his wife. He guessed he was getting old and foolish.
After they had ridden east a day’s journey and spent a night in a thicket Sam said to Hank and Bill he would be leaving them now. They thought he intended to enter Crow country but what Sam had in mind was Colter’s bilins and peace and rest.
When Sam was out of sight Bill said to Hank, "I’m awful oneasy about Sam. He jist didden act natural at all.” Hank’s marvelous gray eyes were looking in the direction Sam had taken and his mind was remembering that the big man had saved his life. He spat a stream of brown juice and said nothing.
32
SAM HADN’T FELT natural since the death of the youngun in the river. He was a fighting man and fighting had been his way of life for years but he felt pretty doggone weary now as he doubled back to the southwest and headed up the beautiful valley of the Gallatin. For the moment anyway he had a bellyful of it; he had had his fill, like old Bill. Barely entering his thirties, he wondered if he was getting old. Well, he would stretch out in hot water a few days and sweat the pisens out of him; and play and sing some arias and the songs he and Lotus had sung, even the songs he and Kate had sung. It would be nice to be alone and safe for a little while. He guessed he ought to go over to his father-in-law and see if he had a marriageable daughter, for in making him for the solitary life the Creator had left something out. In his mind he now and then had a picture of red devils swarming out of the northern lands like huge infuriated wasps, their stingers hanging long and sharp. They had made the boast that the Crows were too cowardly to take him but they could take him, and they would now do their infernal best. So for a while he would live with the birds and the beasts and take stock of his resources and reduce all of living to the simplicity of bird song and hawk wing and wolf call. He had three months before the next trapping season; perhaps he should go home to visit his people. He could go by steamboat down the river but if he returned this year it would have to be overland; contemplation of a journey of thousands of miles did not fill him with joy. He wanted to see his people but he didn’t want to see the kind of life they lived, He would never want to live in what was called the civilized life: "Here where men sit and hear each other groan; where palsy shakes a few last sad gray hairs, and youth grows pale and specter-thin and dies." It was something like that the poet had written.