第47章

Fearful was the fate that months after overtook some of the members of that party.General Kearny, on his late return from California, brought in the account how they were interrupted by the deep snows among the mountains, and maddened by cold and hunger fed upon each other's flesh.

I got tired of the confusion."Come, Paul," said I, "we will be off." Paul sat in the sun, under the wall of the fort.He jumped up, mounted, and we rode toward Fort Laramie.When we reached it, a man came out of the gate with a pack at his back and a rifle on his shoulder; others were gathering about him, shaking him by the hand, as if taking leave.I thought it a strange thing that a man should set out alone and on foot for the prairie.I soon got an explanation.

Perrault--this, if I recollect right was the Canadian's name--had quarreled with the bourgeois, and the fort was too hot to hold him.

Bordeaux, inflated with his transient authority, had abused him, and received a blow in return.The men then sprang at each other, and grappled in the middle of the fort.Bordeaux was down in an instant, at the mercy of the incensed Canadian; had not an old Indian, the brother of his squaw, seized hold of his antagonist, he would have fared ill.Perrault broke loose from the old Indian, and both the white men ran to their rooms for their guns; but when Bordeaux, looking from his door, saw the Canadian, gun in hand, standing in the area and calling on him to come out and fight, his heart failed him;he chose to remain where he was.In vain the old Indian, scandalized by his brother-in-law's cowardice, called upon him to go upon the prairie and fight it out in the white man's manner; and Bordeaux's own squaw, equally incensed, screamed to her lord and master that he was a dog and an old woman.It all availed nothing.Bordeaux's prudence got the better of his valor, and he would not stir.

Perrault stood showering approbrious epithets at the recent bourgeois.Growing tired of this, he made up a pack of dried meat, and slinging it at his back, set out alone for Fort Pierre on the Missouri, a distance of three hundred miles, over a desert country full of hostile Indians.

I remained in the fort that night.In the morning, as I was coming out from breakfast, conversing with a trader named McCluskey, I saw a strange Indian leaning against the side of the gate.He was a tall, strong man, with heavy features.

"Who is he?" I asked."That's The Whirlwind," said McCluskey."He is the fellow that made all this stir about the war.It's always the way with the Sioux; they never stop cutting each other's throats;it's all they are fit for; instead of sitting in their lodges, and getting robes to trade with us in the winter.If this war goes on, we'll make a poor trade of it next season, I reckon."And this was the opinion of all the traders, who were vehemently opposed to the war, from the serious injury that it must occasion to their interests.The Whirlwind left his village the day before to make a visit to the fort.His warlike ardor had abated not a little since he first conceived the design of avenging his son's death.The long and complicated preparations for the expedition were too much for his fickle, inconstant disposition.That morning Bordeaux fastened upon him, made him presents and told him that if he went to war he would destroy his horses and kill no buffalo to trade with the white men; in short, that he was a fool to think of such a thing, and had better make up his mind to sit quietly in his lodge and smoke his pipe, like a wise man.The Whirlwind's purpose was evidently shaken;he had become tired, like a child, of his favorite plan.Bordeaux exultingly predicted that he would not go to war.My philanthropy at that time was no match for my curiosity, and I was vexed at the possibility that after all I might lose the rare opportunity of seeing the formidable ceremonies of war.The Whirlwind, however, had merely thrown the firebrand; the conflagration was become general.

All the western bands of the Dakota were bent on war; and as I heard from McCluskey, six large villages already gathered on a little stream, forty miles distant, were daily calling to the Great Spirit to aid them in their enterprise.McCluskey had just left and represented them as on their way to La Bonte's Camp, which they would reach in a week, UNLESS THEY SHOULD LEARN THAT THERE WERE NO BUFFALOTHERE.I did not like this condition, for buffalo this season were rare in the neighborhood.There were also the two Minnicongew villages that I mentioned before; but about noon, an Indian came from Richard's Fort with the news that they were quarreling, breaking up, and dispersing.So much for the whisky of the emigrants! Finding themselves unable to drink the whole, they had sold the residue to these Indians, and it needed no prophet to foretell the results; a spark dropped into a powder magazine would not have produced a quicker effect.Instantly the old jealousies and rivalries and smothered feuds that exist in an Indian village broke out into furious quarrels.They forgot the warlike enterprise that had already brought them three hundred miles.They seemed like ungoverned children inflamed with the fiercest passions of men.

Several of them were stabbed in the drunken tumult; and in the morning they scattered and moved back toward the Missouri in small parties.I feared that, after all, the long-projected meeting and the ceremonies that were to attend it might never take place, and Ishould lose so admirable an opportunity of seeing the Indian under his most fearful and characteristic aspect; however, in foregoing this, I should avoid a very fair probability of being plundered and stripped, and, it might be, stabbed or shot into the bargain.

Consoling myself with this reflection, I prepared to carry the news, such as it was, to the camp.