IX
_TRADE FOLLOWS THE FLAG_
"_Bon jour_, Ms'ieu, you want to know where dat Captinne?" The politeCreole lifted his cap.
"'Pears now, maybe I heerd he wuz Guv'ner," said the keen-eyed trapperthoughtfully.
"Guff'ner Lewees ees det,--kilt heeself. Generale Clark leeves on deRue Royale, next de Injun office."
In unkempt beard, hair shaggy as a horse's mane, and clothing all ofleather, the stranger climbed the rocky path, using the stock of hisgun for a staff.
It did not take long to find the Indian office. With a dozen loungingbraves outside and a council within, sat William Clark, the Red HeadChief.
General Clark noted the shadow in the door that bright May morning.Not in vain had these men faced the West together.
"Bless me, it's Coalter! Where have you been? How did you come?"
From the mountains, three thousand miles in thirty days, in a smallcanoe, Coalter had come flying down the melting head-snows of theRockies. He was haggard with hunger and loss of sleep.
Leading his old companion to the cottage, Clark soon had himsurrounded with the comforts of a civilised meal. Refreshed, graduallythe trapper unfolded his tale.
When John Coalter left Lewis and Clark at the Mandan towns and wentback with Hancock and Dickson, in that Summer of 1806, they, the firstof white men, entered the Yellowstone Park of to-day. In the Spring,separating from his companions, Coalter set out for St. Louis in asolitary canoe. At the mouth of the Platte he met Manuel Lisa andDrouillard coming up. And with them, John Potts, another of the Lewisand Clark soldiers. On the spot Coalter re-enlisted and returned athird time to the wilderness.
Such a man was invaluable to that first venture in the north. AfterLisa had stockaded his fort at the mouth of the Bighorn, he sentCoalter to bring the Indians. Alone he set out with gun and knapsack,travelled five hundred miles, and brought in his friends the Crows.That laid the foundation of Lisa's fortune.
When Lisa came down with his furs in the Spring, Coalter and Pottswith traps on their backs set out for the beaver-meadows of the ThreeForks, the Madison, the Jefferson, and the Gallatin.
"We knew those Blackfoot sarpints would spare no chance to skelp us,"said Coalter, "so we sot our traps by night an' tuk 'em aforedaylight. Goin' up a creek six miles from the Jefferson, examinin' ourtraps one mornin', on a suddent we heerd a great noise. But the bankswuz high an' we cudn't see.
"'Blackfeet, Potts. Let's retreat,' sez I.
"'Blackfut nuthin'. Ye must be a coward. Thet's buffaloes,' sez Potts.An' we kep' on.
"In a few minutes five or six hunderd Injuns appeared on both sides uvthe creek, beckonin' us ashore. I saw 't warnt no use an' turned thecanoe head in.
"Ez we touched, an Injun seized Potts' rifle. I jumped an' grabbed an'handed it back to Potts in the canoe. He tuk it an' pushed off.
"An' Injun let fly an arrer. Jest ez I heard it whizz, Potts cried,'Coalter, I'm wounded.'
"'Don't try to get off, Potts, come ashore,' I urged. But no, helevelled his rifle and shot a Blackfoot dead on the spot. Instanterthey riddled Potts,--dead, he floated down stream.
"Then they seized and stripped me. I seed 'em consultin'.
"'Set 'im up fer a target,' said some. I knew ther lingo, lernt it'mongst the Crows, raound Lisa's fort, at the Bighorn. But the chiefasked me, 'Can ye run fast?'
"'No, very bad runner,' I answered."
Clark smiled. Well he remembered Coalter as the winner in many aracing bout.
"The chief led me aout on the prairie, 'Save yerself ef ye can.'
"Et thet instant I heerd, 'Whoop-ahahahahah-hooh!' like ten thousanddivils, an' I _flew_.
"It wuz six miles to the Jefferson; the graound wuz stuck like apinquishen with prickly-pear an' sand burrs, cuttin' my bare feet, butI wuz half acrosst before I ventured to look over the shoulder. Thesarpints ware pantin' an' fallin' behind an' scatterin'. But one witha spear not more'n a hunderd yeards behind was gainin'.
"I made another bound,--blood gushed from my nostrils. Nearer, nearerI heerd his breath and steps, expectin' every minute to feel thetspear in my back.
"Agin I looked. Not twenty yeards behind he ran. On a suddint Istopped, turned, and spread my arms. The Blackfoot, astonished at theblood all over my front, perhaps, tried to stop but stumbled an' felland broke his spear. I ran back, snatched the point, and pinned him tothe earth.
"The rest set up a hidjus yell. While they stopped beside ther fallencomrade, almost faintin' I ran inter the cottonwoods on the borders uvthe shore an' plunged ento the river.
"Diving under a raft of drift-timber agin the upper point of a littleisland, I held my head up in a little opening amongst the trunks oftrees covered with limbs and brushwood.
"Screechin', yellin' like so many divils, they come onto the island.Thro' the chinks I seed 'em huntin', huntin', huntin', all day long. Ionly feared they might set the raft on fire.
"But at night they gave it up; the voices grew faint and fer away; Iswam cautiously daown an' acrost, an' landin' travelled all night.
"But I wuz naked. The broilin' sun scorched my skin, my feet werefilled with prickly-pears, an' I wuz hungry. Game, game plenty on thehills, but I hed no gun. It was seven days to Lisa's fort on theBighorn.
"I remembered the Injun turnip that Sacajawea found in there, an'lived on it an' sheep sorrel until I reached Lisa's fort, blisteredfrom head to heel."
As in a vision the General saw it all. Judy's eyes were filled withtears. Through the Gallatin, the Indian Valley of Flowers, whereBozeman stands to-day, the lonely trapper had toiled in the July sunand over the Bozeman Pass, whither Clark's cavalcade had ridden twosummers before.
Six years now had Coalter been gone from civilisation, but he haddiscovered the Yellowstone Park. No one in St. Louis would believe hisstories of hot water spouting in fountains, "Coalter's Hell," butWilliam Clark traced his route on the map that he sent forpublication.
John Coalter now received his delayed reward for theexpedition,--double pay and three hundred acres of land,--and went upto find Boone at Charette.
"What! Pierre Menard!" Another boat had come out of the north.General Clark grasped the horny hand of the fur trader. "What luck?"
"Bad, bad," gloomily answered the trader with a shake of his flowingmane. "Drouillard is dead, and the rest are likely soon to be."
"What do you mean?"
"Blackfeet!"
Clark guessed all, even before he heard the full details behind lockeddoors of the Missouri Fur Company at the warehouse of Pierre Chouteau.
"As you knew," began Menard, "we spent last winter at Fort Lisa on theBighorn. When Lisa started down here in March we packed our traps onhorses, crossed to the Three Forks, and built a double stockade oflogs at the confluence of the rivers. Every night the men came in withbeaver, beaver, beaver. We confidently expected to bring down not lessthan three hundred packs this fall but that hope is shattered. On the12th of April our men were ambuscaded by Blackfeet. Five were killed.All their furs, traps, horses, guns, and equipments are without doubtby this time at Fort Edmonton on the Saskatchewan."
"But you expected to visit the Snakes and Flatheads," suggested one torouse the despondent trader from his revery.
"I did. And the object was to obtain a Blackfoot prisoner if possiblein order to open communication with his tribe. They are the mostunapproachable Indians we have known. They refuse all overtures.
"Just outside the fort Drouillard was killed. A high wind was blowingat the time, so he was not heard, but the scene of the conflictindicated a desperate defence.
"Despair seized our hunters. They refused to go out. Indeed, it wasimpossible to go except in numbers, so Henry and I concluded it wasbest to report. I set out by night, and here I am, with these men andthirty packs of beaver. God pity poor Henry at the Three Forks!"
Thus at one blow were shattered the high hopes of the Missouri FurCompany. All thought of Andrew Henry, tall, slender, blue-eyed,dark-haired, a man that spoke seld
om, but of great deeds. Would hesurvive a winter among the Blackfeet?
But there was another cause of disquiet to the Missouri Fur Company.
"Have you heard of John Jacob Astor?"
"What?"
"He has gone with Wilson Price Hunt to Montreal to engage men for anexpedition to the Columbia."
"What, Hunt who kept an Indian shop here on the Rue?" They all knewhim. He had come to St. Louis in 1804 and become an adept inoutfitting.
Two or three times Astor had offered to buy stock in the Missouri FurCompany but had been refused. Jefferson himself had recommended him toLewis. Now he was carrying trade into the fur country over theirheads. Already he had a great trade on the lakes, and to theheadwaters of the Mississippi. He had profited by the surrender ofDetroit and Mackinaw. Another stride took him to the Falls of St.Anthony; and now, along the trail of Lewis and Clark he planned to befirst on the Pacific. With ships by sea and caravans by land, he couldat last accomplish the wished-for trade to China.
"But I, too, planned the Pacific trade," said Manuel Lisa, coming downin the Autumn. There was some jealousy that a New York man should befirst to follow the trail to the sea.
The winter was one of anxiety, for Astor's men had arrived in St.Louis and had gone up the Missouri to camp until Spring. Anxiety, too,for Andrew Henry, out there alone in the Blackfoot country.
Could they have been gifted with sufficient sight, the partners in St.Louis might even then have seen the brave Andrew Henry fighting forhis life on that little tongue of land between the Madison and theJefferson. No trapping could be done. It was dangerous to go anydistance from the fort except in large parties. Fearing the entiredestruction of his little band, Henry moved across the mountains intothe Oregon country, and wintered on what is now Henry's Fork of theriver Snake, the first American stronghold on the Columbia.
"We must exterminate Hunt's party," said Manuel Lisa.
"No," said Pierre Chouteau. "Next year he will send again and again,and in time will exterminate us. Your duty will be to protect his menon the water, and may God Almighty have mercy on them in themountains, for they will never reach their destination."
From his new home at Charette John Coalter saw Astor's people goingby, bound for the Columbia. To his surprise they inquired for him.
"General Clark told us you were the best informed man in the country."
Coalter told them of the hostility of the Blackfeet and the story ofhis escape. He longed to return with them to the mountains, but he hadjust married a squaw and he decided to stay. Moreover, a twinge in hislimbs warned him that that plunge in the Jefferson had given himrheumatism for life.
Daniel Boone, standing on the bank at Charette when Hunt went by, camedown and examined their outfit. "Jist returned from my traps on theCreek," he said, pointing to sixty beaver skins.
Tame beavers and otters, caught on an island opposite Charette Creek,were playing around his cabin. And his neighbours had elk and deer andbuffalo, broken to the yoke.
Several seasons had Boone with his old friend Calloway trapped on theKansas; now he longed for the mountains.
"Another year and I, too, will go to the Yellowstone," said DanielBoone.
"Andrew Henry must be rescued. His situation is desperate. He may bedead," said General Clark, President of the Missouri Fur Company atSt. Louis.
Three weeks behind Hunt, Lisa set out in a swift barge propelled bytwenty oars, with a swivel on the bow and two blunderbusses in thecabin. Lisa had been a sea-captain,--he rigged his boat with a goodmast, mainsail and topsail, and led his men with a ringing boat-song.
Then followed a keelboat race of a thousand miles up the Missouri.June 2 Lisa caught up with Hunt near the present Bismarck, and metAndrew Henry coming down with forty packs of beaver.
To avoid the hostile Blackfeet, Hunt bought horses and crossed throughthe Yellowstone-Crow country to the abandoned fort of Henry on theSnake, and on to the Columbia.
Aboard that barge with Lisa went Sacajawea. True to her word, she hadbrought the little Touissant down to St. Louis, where Clark placed himwith the Catholic sisters to be trained for an interpreter. Sacajaweawas dressed as a white woman; she had quickly adopted their mannersand language; but, in the words of a chronicler who saw her there,"she had become sickly, and longed to revisit her native country. Herhusband also had become wearied of civilised life."
So back they went to the Minnetarees, bearing pipes from Clark to thechiefs. Five hundred dollars a year Charboneau now received as Indianagent for the United States. For more than thirty years he held hispost, and to this day his name may be traced in the land of Dakota.
We can see Sacajawea now, startled and expectant, her heart beatinglike a trip-hammer under her bodice, looking at Julia! No dreams ofher mountains had ever shown such sunny hair, such fluffs of curls,like moonrise on the water. And that diaphanous cloud,--was it adress? No Shoshone girl ever saw such buckskin, finer than blossom ofthe bitter-root.
"I am come," said Sacajawea.
A whole year she had tarried among the whites, quickly accommodatingherself to their ways. But in the level St. Louis she dreamed of hernorthland, and now she was going home!