CHAPTER X.
THE STORM KING.
On the several signals, the mountaineers saw the Crows spring up evenfrom coverts where they had not suspected them to lurk. They shook offthe snow like so many feathers off a shot bird, as well as their robes,which would encumber their onset. Immediately firearms of all sorts,for the red men are rarely armed uniformly, began and kept up the sharpcontinuous crackle of a firing at will.
"Thar she blazes!" said Cherokee Bill, with a ferocious grin.
Besides their bullets, the Crows had flung fireballs and fire tippedarrows upon the waggons, and had followed them in at the openings ofthe interlocked carts. But they had no timid emigrants to deal with,whatever they might have thought. Quite otherwise, for the Bois Bruleswere on the alert, employing all defensive measures in their fullknowledge available in that site. Their firing was only done when theypushed the Indians with the muzzles, and it was dead or wounded whomthey thus blew back without the barrier.
This repulse did not dishearten the marauders. They came on again asboldly, but with more method. Some carried bunches of resinous twigssmeared with elk fat, and using them first as shields by which to reachthe waggon wheels, dropped them between them and fired them beforeretiring. The camp defenders were forced to detach several to put outthese flames, which soon caught the waggon canvas covers.
At one gap about forty of the savages clambered in, and plied knivesand hatchets to reach the horses, which they hoped to stampede, andso augment the confusion, whilst relieving the owners of the power todepart speedily. Their whoops were already impressed with the tone ofvictory.
The main body of the Red River Half-breeds surrounded a large tentwhich undoubtedly contained their valuables, including the captivewomen, whose psalms had been heard by the mountain men. The rest of theHalf-breeds resisted the rush towards the cattle.
All at once several Indians were seen setting upon a young Canadian,who had a keg under one arm, which he defended with a woodman's axe.
"Whisky! Whisky! The firewater; ha, ha!" cried these savages, laughingand yelling in his face under the very axe which menaced to leave themno heads into which to gulp their beloved liquor.
"You asses, it's powder!" he returned, contemptuous of their stupidity.
At the same moment, whilst his and half a dozen other pairs of handswrenched the keg asunder, one of the gusts of wind swept towards thegroup the blazing shreds of a tarpaulin of a waggon being pillaged.A spark kindled the outpouring grains, the explosion ensued, and thecluster of redskins was horribly scattered, while the Bois Brules felllimbed.
Though almost conquerors, the unsuppressible screams of the victimsof this ravage intimidated the Crows, and nothing but the promptencouragement of their chiefs prevented a panic. On the other hand, theview of so much harm wrought by a single hand revived the Half-breeds'courage. They saw that, at least, they would not perish withoutretaliation, and that they could evade death by torture by blowingthemselves up.
The death dealing explosion acted as a signal for an armed truce ofscanty duration.
Meanwhile the Scotch allies of the mountain men had watched thestruggle from their aerie with the burning impatience of boarhounds whohear the beast gnashing his tusks. All but Ridge seemed thus chafing totake a share in the sanguinary game. They only controlled their warlikeinstincts till the bursting of the gunpowder keg forced them to applaudthe Canadian victim. Then, without a word, they bounded from among therocks and rushed down on the 'Plat.' All that Ridge could do was getthem under some restraint, so as to "plunge in" orderly.
The combatants had their attention so engaged within the camp, that thenew arrivals ran up to the waggon hubs without being noticed. Thereforethe Yager halted them behind two stumps, of which the trunk and limbshad helped fence the enclosure, and went half round it to inspect thesmoking ruins, where gashed and mutilated bodies proved that neitherCanadian nor Indian struck with daintiness. Rejoining his companions,he briefly explained how he wished them to aim, and they impatientlyawaited his word of command.
The pause was now over, for Ahnemekee was flourishing his spiked warclub and sounding the charging cry. In another moment the redskins whosurvived the last shots of the Bois Brules would be in the tent of thewomen and raining merciless blows on their unresisting forms.
"Fire into the brown of them!" roared Ridge, furious at the scene, notunknown to him, which he imagined.
At the back of the Crows, then, through the smoke and a few idlyfalling flakes of spotless snow, a dozen shots resounded, and at leastten of them pitched headfirst towards the Canadians, whose ballswhizzed over them and strewed death among their surprised companions.
Taken between two fires, the Crows felt they had lost the day. TheBois Brules, without wasting time in seeking whence were their timelydeliverers, shouted "_Vive la Canadienne!_" and bravely took theoffensive. But, casting aside their empty guns, the Crows scatteredthrough the camp, and tried to scramble out of the environment witheven more alacrity than they had shown in entering. Shot down by theunknown foe and cut to pieces by the reanimated Half-breeds--it was a"fix." Weaponless, stripped almost naked for the action, debarred fromspeeding to the spot where their garments were stored, the Indiansmust have been slaughtered to a man on the frigid waste had not theirfrantic appeals to the patron of their tribe seemed to have obtained anintervention.
That storm which had been two days breeding, and was unmistakablythreatened overnight, flew over the mountain crest and burst on thetablelands with unmeasured violence. It was the "blizzard," to whichEast Indian cyclones, West Indian tornadoes, and what Europe callstempests, are zephyrs to fan a baby's brow. One of those cataclysmswhich befall poor earth as if destined to destroy it, and rage in thedesert so furiously that the aspect of the whole tract for thousandsupon thousands of miles is often transformed in a few hours. The windcame out of gorges like a compacted bolt, and basalt was piercedlike putty; the eddies, or "screw wind," uprooted hoary pines andwaltzed away with them in the distance. The snow and hail cloudswere compressed to the tree and hill tops, and condensed the loweratmosphere so that breathing was difficult, and cattle stopped infrantic flight as if a colossal hand were laid on their backs. The snowfell in balled up masses, and light absolutely disappeared so far asany ability to fix its source existed. All the eye could perceive was avariation in the density of the seams of gloom. As for hearing, any oneof the portentous sounds must have deafened--the roar of the wind, thecrash of the dethroned peaks, the ripping of the trees, the rush of theavalanches of snow, sand, and rocks.
The Indians had scattered over the plain, trembling and moaning theirprayers indiscriminately to the Great Good Spirit and the Little BadOne. On they fled, trampling on birds and beasts, whose lifelonglairs and nests were wrecked, and which grovelled flat in agony ofapprehension. Most dreadful of all, now and then a fugitive was balledup in a thick gust, and the packing flakes around him rapidly gatheringadditional layers, he was soon thrown down, and thence forth, the coreof a rolling hill spun on for leagues over the tablelands.
Ridge had time to raise the cry, "With me, on our only chance, boys!"and by a miracle, blindly, yet surely, led the band back to theirlate post, however precarious was that refuge, attained over new andterrible obstacles in the thick snow.
The lately smooth-as-glass beaver meadow lake was rough with stonesthat had smashed the mirror; the subterranean stream, vastly swollen,rose up like an entombed snake, bursting the surface and splashed aboutimpetuously for outlets which continual changes of the rocky barriersoffered and withdrew. As the torrent rose to the hunters, the snowmassively came down. But they were hardened border men, and far fromletting even justifiable awe paralyse their courage, arched their backsagainst the piercing north wind, and listened to judge by its sinistervoice where would open an escape from the enwrapping danger.
Fortunately, the very violence of these Rocky Mountain snowstormslessen their duration, and they calm down more rapidly than they breakout--suddenly and without a warning lull
. This the adventurers knew,except Filditch and Ranald alone, perhaps, and though they were kneedeep in icy water and mere snowmen, they dwelt statuesque without amurmur.
During three hours they huddled up, clinging to each other, merelyshifting, so that every now and then the more exposed should bereplaced by the best sheltered--a living bulwark, that built andunbuilt itself for its own protection.
"Hurrah, boys!" shouted the Yager, as the wind died away sharply,"We have weathered it. Old Rocky is some, though, when he pitchessnowballs!"
The snowflakes were soft at last, and not intermingled with icy atomsthat cut the cheek, ay, and even the leather of their dress, like asandblast. Soon that ceased, and they could view the dreadful medley ofthe devastated country.
All the landmarks were removed, and the new ones were frightfullyfantastic. Trees were stripped into logs, and flung upon the bluffs,and boulders were perched in the crotches of dismantled trunks. Thegrove where the hunters had been ambushed among the stumps, to succourthe Half-breeds' captives, no longer existed even to the roots. Nosound arose where no breathing creature remained. Four feet deep thesnow and sleet spread as a blanched shroud over the level ground.
The survivors waited an hour for the frothy torrent to go down, so thatthey could ford it by offering an angular resistance, all supportingthe upstream leader against the still raging current. Then, rigging uptemporary snowshoes out of fragments of elder and their ragged robes,they began to glide over the fresh floor, hardly firm enough yet tosupport even their restless skimming. They were five hours reaching aplace of refuge near the secluded cave which Ridge did not wish to makeof public knowledge.
Of the Crows and the Bois Brules there was not a trace. Such a stormcould have made one huge snowball of waggons and cattle, and trundledit irresistibly down the steppes into the gullies of the Bad Lands ofMontana.