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It was due to the influence of such men as the Superintendents and Inspectors of the Police in charge of the various posts throughout the foothill country more than to anything else that the Chiefs of the "great, warlike, intelligent and untractable tribes" of Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan, Sarcee and Stony Indians were prevented from breaking their treaties and joining with the rebel Crees, Salteaux and Assiniboines of the North and East.
After that there was nothing but the muffled tr-up, tr-up of grazing horses. Piegan or MacRae, I could not tell which, tugged gently at my arm, and the three of us retreated slowly, crawling both literally and figuratively.
But he was not thinking of the dead man's record in the books of the Mounted Police. On the rampart of hills overlooking the Piegan encampment the sun was shining pleasantly. The winter, after its final savage kick, had vanished and summer, crowding hard upon spring, was wooing the bluffs and hillsides on their southern exposures to don their summer robes of green.
"That fire's mighty close, an' comin' on the jump," Piegan remarked, with an upward glance. "I wish she'd let up long enough for us t' finish this job. That smoke's as good as they want, once it begins t' settle in the gorge. What in thunder d'yuh s'pose Mac's doin' all this time. He ought t' show pretty quick, now." He showed, as Piegan put it, very shortly.
Then they got off their horses and kissed each other. Every Piegan asked a Snake into his lodge to eat and rest, and the Snake women put up their lodges beside the Piegan lodges. So the great peace was made. In Owl Bear's lodge there was a great feast, and when they had finished he said to his people: "Here is the man whose scalp I took. Did I say I killed him? No.
"You can't save life without running some risk yourself, not as a rule, can you?" she said, shrinking from his familiarity. "Not as a rule," he replied. "You took on a bit of risk with me, you and your Piegan pony." "Oh, I was young," she responded, leaning over the table and drawing faces on a piece of paper before her. "I could take more risks, I was only nineteen!"
"There's a good deal more than that, according to Goodell's figures," MacRae commented. "Lessard must have got away with quite a sum from the post. I daresay the pockets of the combination hold the rest. But I don't hanker to search a dead man, and that can wait till we get to Walsh." "Yuh goin' t' lug this coyote bait t' Fort Walsh?" Piegan inquired.
Then we ate a cold breakfast and betook ourselves to the nearest hill-top, where, screened by a huddle of rocks, we could watch for the coming of Piegan Smith; and, incidentally, keep an eye on the redcoat camp, though the distance was too great to observe their movements with any degree of certainty. The most important thing was to avoid letting a bunch of them ride up on us unheralded.
The bunch had stopped and tarried there a few minutes, as the jumbled hoof-marks bore witness, and the track of two horses led away toward Ten Mile Spring. "Darn it all!" Piegan grumbled. "Now, what d'yuh reckon's the meanin' uh that? Them two has lit straight for where Baker's layout was camped this mornin'. What for? Are they pullin' out uh the country with the coin?
It is no exaggeration to say, however, that from one-quarter to one-third of the Piegan tribe starved to death during that winter and the following spring.
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