Montana Territory

by Charles G. West

  “Let’s take him along, too,” Hawk said, and pointed to the little man still huddling up to the fire.

  “What for?” Conner asked.

  “’Cause there’s a lot of things flyin’ around in his brain that the rest of us don’t even know exist,” Hawk answered. “Besides, it doesn’t look like he’s too busy to go for a little ride.”

  “Whatever makes you happy, Hawk.” Conner shrugged. “Thank you for the use of your wagon, Reverend Bridger. We’ll take good care of your horses,” he said to the preacher, then turned back to Lewis. “We’ll start back right after breakfast. All right?” When Donald agreed, Conner said, “We’ll let you get back to your supper now and we’ll see you in the morning.”

  Hawk had one more question for Lewis. “Did you tell Lieutenant Sessions everything you just told us?”

  “Yes, we told the lieutenant, and he said he was real happy that the six of us made it back. But he said there was no use thinking about catching the murderers now. It had been too long, he said. They would be out of the territory already. Out of his field of jurisdiction, I think he put it.”

  Hawk and Conner exchanged glances of contempt. “Well, it’s not out of our jurisdiction,” Conner promptly declared. “We’ll do our best to try to find those men.”

  As if only then aware of their presence when Hawk and Conner started to leave, the elflike little man got up from the fire and walked over to stand in front of them. Straining to look up from the posture his curved spine allowed, he glanced at Conner, then fixed his gaze upon Hawk. He continued to stare up at the tall, broad-shouldered scout in the buckskin shirt. Finally, he uttered one word: “Hawk.”

  “That’s right,” Hawk answered, and the little man Lemuel had nicknamed Frog hopped back over by the fire, contented.

  “How the hell did he know your name?” Conner asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the others.

  “He doesn’t,” Hawk said. “He just said that’s a hawk feather in my hatband. He notices things. That’s why I want him to come with us.”

  “How do you know he notices things?” Conner asked, not ready to accept Hawk’s reasoning.

  “I don’t,” Hawk answered. “Sometimes you just have to hope, I reckon.”

  CHAPTER 5

  When Conner led his patrol back to the church the next morning, he found Donald Lewis and the three other men ready to leave. The preacher’s horses were hitched up, and the wagon was loaded with a pick and shovel as well as some food for a day or two. He hadn’t thought to offer it before, so Conner volunteered the services of his men to dig graves for the bodies of the slain Quakers. “There were some shovels and other tools packed on some of the mules,” Lewis said, “but we thought we’d bring the Reverend Bridger’s as well.”

  It was a trip of about ten miles down a wagon road that led them to the farm of Adam Wylie, the farmer who took the survivors to Fort Benton after they came out of the river. As gracious as before, Wylie and his wife welcomed them back and offered to feed everyone, including the patrol of sixteen soldiers plus a scout. The offer was declined, of course, much to Mrs. Wylie’s relief, when Conner explained that they were working to save as much daylight as possible for their investigation. Thinking Mr. Wylie probably had a better idea how far the Quakers had walked from the river, Hawk asked him the distance and was told about three quarters of a mile. “We’re closer to the river than that,” Wylie said, “but they came outta the water a little farther up the river. My boy can take you to the spot.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Conner said, after an inquisitive look in Hawk’s direction. “We’ll be moving right along up the river after we rest these horses a little while. We’re just trying to get an idea of how far they drifted in the river before they got here.”

  The only reason to pause there was to rest the team of horses pulling the wagon, so Hawk saw no reason to wait there, too, so he made a suggestion. “Rascal doesn’t need any rest yet, so why don’t I go on ahead of you. I can ride down along the riverbank and I might see where the massacre happened.” His point was well taken, since the terrain along the river was too rugged for the wagon. It would have to stay on the road. “If Donald was floatin’ in the water as long as he thought, I might be able to find the place it happened, then I’ll come out to the road to wait for you to catch up.” That sounded like a good plan to Conner, so Hawk stepped back up into the saddle and wheeled Rascal back toward the road. “Don’t forget to bring Frog,” he said in parting.

  Back on the road, Hawk headed west, continuing on the rough wagon road for a distance he figured to be a reasonable gamble. When he came to a bend in the river that brought it within about a couple dozen yards of the road, he guided Rascal off the road and rode down along the water’s edge. It was a rough trail to ride, especially in some spots where rocks or trees extended out over the water, causing him to have to detour around them. Each time, he would get back to the water’s edge as soon as he could. After an hour or so, he determined that he had been wasting his time and tiring Rascal out needlessly. Ahead of him, the river cut through a high hill, leaving steep bluffs on each side. At the top of the bluff, he could see a large flock of buzzards circling over it. “Hell,” he said to Rascal, “I coulda seen that from the road.” He guided the buckskin up from the water and climbed the hill. When he reached the top of the hill, he suddenly pulled the gelding to a stop. “Another day or two, and I could smell it from the road,” he muttered when he discovered the grisly scene before him. The odor from the putrefying bodies caused him to pull his bandanna up to cover his mouth and nose.

  He walked Rascal slowly through a grass-covered hilltop, surrounded by a thick belt of fir trees and strewn with the bodies of the late Quaker mule train. The magnitude of the vicious slaughter was beyond his belief in the depth of evil man was capable of. Adding to the revulsion of the scene was the raucous squawking of the competing vultures as they fought over the rotting feast. Riding close to the edge of the steep bluff, he could see where Donald and the others had been forced over the edge to drop fifty feet or more to the river below. He turned to look back toward the road but could see no sign of it through the thick trees. He continued to slow-walk Rascal around the circle, looking for any sign that might tell him which way the killers left the hilltop. The only obvious path was the one where the mule train had entered the circle. He followed that down the hill to the road, where he prepared to wait for Conner and the wagon to show up. There were tracks that told of the meeting between the killers and the Quaker party where they were stopped on the road, then climbed the hill on the path he had just come down. He could not understand how the patrol sent out from Fort Benton had not found the tracks he was looking at. He could only assume they had not continued their search for very long, perhaps not riding as far down the road to Great Falls as Lieutenant Sessions had said.

  By his estimation, it was sometime after noon when he caught sight of the wagon rounding the bend in the road as it wound around the hill. “You find ’em?” Conner asked after he rode around the wagon and loped up ahead. Hawk held his thumb up and motioned toward the sky. Conner looked up to see the buzzards circling. “Oh,” he said, and dismounted. “Pretty bad, huh?”

  “It might be pretty hard for those men in the wagon to take,” Hawk answered. “Now that we’re here, I’m wonderin’ if it was a good idea to haul those poor souls back here to see this. It ain’t just the sight of it, it’s also the smell of it. I can’t see as how they’re gonna be of any help in tellin’ us which way they went, anyway. Hell, they were pushed off a damn cliff up there. They don’t have any notion what the bastards did after that.”

  “Well, they’ve been talking about feeling obligated to give their friends a decent burial,” Conner said, and looked over his shoulder at the wagon pulling up to them. “I guess we can see how they feel about it now.”

  “This is the place!” Lewis exclaimed, and hopped down as the wagon rolled to a stop. “This is it, ain’t it, Corey?” The
man named Corey said that it was. Lewis turned to Conner and started to explain. “They were waiting here in the middle of the road, I remember now. There were four of ’em, just sitting on their horses, waiting for us. David Booth said there was no need to fear them, he knew who they were. He rode on up ahead to talk to them. When he came back he said they told him there was a big war party of Blackfoot Indians coming this way, and we needed to ride up through the trees there to hide on top of the hill.” He paused only briefly to look at the other three men for verification, then he continued, “When we got up on the hill, they suddenly pulled their guns and one of them handed a gun belt to David. He put it on and pulled the pistol out of the holster and said if nobody did anything foolish, nobody would get hurt. Brother Adams was leading the mule carrying all our money, and he tried to run with it, and that’s when they all went crazy. They shot poor Brother Adams down, and then they all started shooting. I can’t remember much of what happened after that. There was just so much noise, the shooting and the screaming, and the next thing I knew, I was falling. When I hit the water, it musta knocked the wind outta me, ’cause I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was drowning.”

  Hawk looked at the faces of Donald’s fellow survivors and he could tell they were reliving the horrible experience along with him. He nudged Conner and said softly, “I don’t know if we oughta take them up to see that scene or not.” Even as he said it, the little elf called Frog hopped down from the wagon and started up through the trees toward the top of the hill.

  When Donald turned as if to start up the hill after Frog, Conner stopped him. “Mr. Lewis, I’m not sure you and your friends oughta go up that hill. Hawk, here, says it’s a pretty grim scene up there. Nothing but bodies lying everywhere, and the buzzards are already working on them.”

  It was enough to cause Donald to hesitate, then turn to the other three survivors before deciding. They talked briefly, then Donald turned back to Conner. “We know it’s something we don’t really want to see, but we owe it to our friends to drive the vultures away and bury our people.” He gestured toward one of the three. “Brother James lost his wife and two sons, and he wants to bury them, himself.” So, they unhitched the horses from the wagon and Corporal Johnson detailed three of the men to take all the horses around the base of the hill to water them in the river. The rest of the party climbed up through the trees to the grisly scene at the top. The rest of the day was consumed with the work of digging deep trenches, using the few tools they’d brought with them, plus some found on the bodies of the pack mules. After battling the buzzards for what was left of the bodies of their fellow church members, they decided to let the fierce birds have the mules for their feast. Sick with grief, Brother James was unable to continue when he could not identify his wife and children after the buzzards had mutilated all the bodies. It was almost dark when the last mound was tamped down over the mass graves, and Donald gave a brief eulogy for the departed souls.

  “Well, I guess that’s about all we can do up here for these poor folks,” Conner commented to Hawk. “I’m thinking I’ll have the men set up camp back down the road by that little stream we crossed on the way here, since it’s too much trouble to get to the river from here. That way, we can let the Quakers sleep in the wagon. Then we’ll go back to Fort Benton in the morning. Whatcha think?” Hawk said it was as good a plan as any, then another thought occurred to Conner. “What the hell happened to that little fellow? He just disappeared after we got up here on the hill.”

  Hawk had to chuckle. “He was here all day. This is where he lives.” When Conner looked confused, Hawk explained, “I wondered about him, myself, earlier this afternoon, so I did a little scoutin’. He’s got a cave in the face of that cliff, hangin’ over the river. He crawls up and down a rope to get in and out of it. I found his rope tied around the foot of a pine where the trees run right up to the edge of the bluff. He had it covered up pretty good to keep anybody from seein’ it.”

  “Well, I’ll be . . .” Conner started. “So that’s why he just appeared, and nobody knew where he came from. He ain’t a goblin after all,” he announced, laughing as he did. Then another thought occurred. “I wonder why he jumped in the river with Lewis and the others.”

  “I expect he decided things were gettin’ too hot to stay here,” Hawk speculated. “And after he showed ’em how to get to Adam Wylie’s farm, he decided he might as well go with ’em to Fort Benton and get a good meal, especially after those outlaws made such a mess of his homeplace.”

  “Maybe we should take him back to Fort Benton,” Conner said. “It doesn’t seem right to leave him out here in this wilderness.”

  “I don’t know,” Hawk said. “I expect he’s been livin’ like this for most of his life. I reckon he’s just another wild thing livin’ in the woods—most likely prefers it to livin’ with people. If it was up to me, I’d say leave it up to him.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Conner said. “At any rate, we’ll find out in the morning, because I expect he’ll just hop on the wagon if he wants to go back with the others.” He turned to follow the rest of his soldiers back down the trail to the road. “You coming?”

  “I’ll be along directly,” Hawk answered. “I wanna check a few things first.” He waited until Conner was on his way back down before turning and going to the edge of the cliff where he had found the rope tied around the tree. He stepped back into the trees and sat down where he could watch the tree with the rope tied to it. After a little while, when the last sounds of the men moving down through the forest to the road faded away and all was quiet on the hilltop, he saw what he expected. At first, there was a slight movement in the pine straw covering the rope, then it was followed by the appearance of a gray, woolly head over the edge of the cliff. Hawk waited until the little man was all the way up and onto the top of the bluff before speaking. On a hunch, he spoke in the Blackfoot tongue. “Your home is quiet now.” The little man nicknamed Frog jerked upright, looking all around him, much like a squirrel when startled. “Have no fear,” Hawk said, “I am a friend.”

  Then locating the source of the voice, the little man focused his gaze upon the man seated, Indian fashion, among the trees. “Hawk,” he said, also in the Blackfoot tongue.

  “My name is Hawk,” Hawk said. “You are a white man?”

  “I am Siksika,” he replied, claiming to be Blackfoot.

  Hawk was not surprised. He had figured Frog to have possibly been captured by the Indians when he was a small boy. “These men who attacked these people, had they been here before?” He thought it possible that David Booth’s outlaw partners might have been looking for a good place to hide bodies, should it become a necessity. Frog nodded anxiously in response. “Did you see them when they left?” Again, Frog nodded rapidly. “Will you show me?” Hawk asked. With no hesitation, Frog started toward the path back down to the road. Hawk followed right behind him.

  When they reached the road, the little man turned to the west. Moving rapidly, even though unable to stand up straight, Frog limped along the side of the road until he came to a deep gully. He stopped and pointed to hoofprints, some leading down into a gully, others coming up from it. Hawk hopped down into the gully, interested more in the fresher tracks leaving the road. Looking as closely as he could in the fading light of day, he was able to make out the smaller tracks of a mule, mixed in with those of the horses. That would be the mule carrying all the Quakers’ money, he thought. He paused to look around him at the growing darkness, knowing it would be better to follow the tracks in daylight. At least, it gave him a start. He looked back at the road, where Frog stood watching him. When he caught his eye, the little man grinned and began nodding rapidly again. “Choteau,” he said, and repeated, “Choteau.” Then he asked, “Good?”

  “Good,” Hawk answered, not really understanding what he meant by Choteau. “Let’s go get something to eat now,” he said. Together, they walked back down the road to the campsite, where a couple of healthy fires were already burn
ing. He went to his packhorse and got some deer jerky and hardtack, which he gave to Frog and motioned for him to eat.

  “Looks like you made a friend,” Conner commented when Hawk walked up to the fire. “How’d you get him outta his hole?”

  Hawk responded with a question of his own. “What are you plannin’ to do in the mornin’?”

  “We’ll take all these folks back to Fort Benton,” Conner said, surprised that he had asked. “What did you think?”

  “Well, I’ve got a trail I can follow outta here. It ain’t as fresh as I’d like it, but it’s pretty plain to see. It’s the same one Booth’s partners rode in on, so there’s a good chance it might lead us to ’em.” He imagined he could see the wheels turning in Conner’s brain, but knew his friend was obligated to see that Lewis and his friends were escorted safely back to Fort Benton. “What I want to know is, are you goin’ after those murderin’ bastards, once you take the preacher’s wagon back?”

  “Well, sure, I’m gonna see if we can catch up with them, although I know we’ll most likely be too far behind to have much chance of doing it,” Conner said. “How many days ago did this thing happen? I’m not really sure.”

  Hawk was halfway convinced that Conner was really feeling as if his mission had been completed, now that Major Brisbin’s nephew was safe. “You don’t need me to show you how to get back to Fort Benton, so I’m thinkin’ it’s a good idea if I start out on their trail. And maybe by the time you and your soldiers show up I might have an idea where they’re holed up.” He paused, waiting for a show of commitment. When Conner failed to comment right away, he said, “I just wanna be sure you’ll be comin’ along behind me.”

  “Damn, I don’t know, Hawk. What if we lose your trail?” Conner responded.

  “I’ll make sure you don’t. I’ll mark it enough so even you can follow it,” he japed. “Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’re headed for a hideout somewhere. I can’t abide the notion of lettin’ that bunch get away with the murder of all those good folks back up on that hill.”