Schultz

“ Castle of Aigle
In the mean time the people in our pension, who were so intelligent and well informed about other things, bore witness to the real security of the State, and the tranquillity of the Swiss mind generally concerning politics, by their ignorance of the name of their existing President. They believed he was a man of the name of Schultz; but it appeared that his name was not at all Schultz, when we referred the matter to our pasteur. ”

“ It was understood that they were to fight their duel when they came to the next halting-place. But Captain Schultz, a good comrade, an admirable horseman, who was loved by everybody in the regiment, and had been chosen by the count for his second, succeeded in arranging the affair in such a manner that not only they did not fight, but that no one in the regiment knew about the matter; and Turbin and Polózof, though their old relations of friendship were never restored, still said "thou," and met at meals and at the gaming-table. ”

“ He voted for the Herr Proprietor.
"Bravo!" resounded through the hall. "Wimmersdorf is right! Neighbor, you are right! How shall we live, if we don't keep on good terms with such people?"
"That is not my opinion," said Schultz, the carpenter, creeping softly up into the cask, like a fat snail, out of its shell, and he looked like one, for all the world. "Stuff and nonsense, tailor Wimmersdorf, stuff and nonsense! Did the Gurlitz potentate trouble himself about us, did he pay up our bills, before he needed us? Why does he stand here in the hall, when his admission has been opposed? ”

“ Schultz, with a grin at the crowd, and the crowd laughed in a guarded way, because they did not wish to be fired out of the entertainment.
“How long have you been conducting that business?”—“About ten years. Before that I was mining in Montana.”
“Where is your house in Portage City?”—“The next house to the courthouse,” responded the witness with a cunning look at the Court, and there was another wild outburst of mirth from the audience. Mr. Schultz narrated a part of his early history, from which it appeared that before he became a millionaire he played the fiddle at dances ”

“ The low, sweet sage growth along the slope could not have hidden a bear from us, but it is high enough to conceal men lying flat in it. Almost-brother, I believe with old Lame Wolf that trouble is about to break upon us!"
"Well, they shall not get these horses," I declared.
When, at last, we hobbled the loose animals and picketed Is-spai-u and Pitamakan's runner we felt sure that no enemy could find us. But there was to be no sleep for us that night; we settled down to listen for the far-off boom of the cannon, which would tell us that the cut-throats had attacked our camp. ”

“ He went none too soon; a great crowd was gathering about the lodge, shouting angrily, crying for our scalps, no doubt. We held our weapons ready and kept our eyes on the lodge skin, expecting every moment that the warriors would raise it and pour in upon us. I tell you, that was an anxious time. I must have shown that I was terribly frightened, for Mad Plume gave my shoulder a pat and said to me: "Take courage, younger brother, take courage!" ”

“ I am sure that the brush behind them is full of warriors!" Pitamakan replied.
I somehow believed that for once he was mistaken, and when a moment later the five men started toward us, all making the peace sign and singing a strange, quaint, melancholy song, so weird, so strangely affecting, that it almost brought tears to my eyes, Pitamakan himself said, "I was mistaken! They are men of peace! I believe that they are men of the Earth-Houses People." ”

“ I remembered how worried my uncle was when I had left our lodge; how serious was the expression of Abbott's eyes when he predicted that the attack by the cut-throats was about to take place.
I stared at the faint, moonlit outlines of the Moccasin Mountains, away off to the southwest. Somewhere along the trail at the foot of them the Pikuni were doubtless camping that night. Unwittingly I cried out in Blackfoot, "Oh, hurry! Hurry to us, you men of the Pikuni, else you will come too late!"
"What? What did you say? Do you see enemies?" Pitamakan whispered as he sat up suddenly at my side. ”

“ If a man or woman was to be punished, it was a band of the society that meted it out, after the chiefs decided what the punishment should be. In battle the members of a band hung close together, shouting the name of it, and encouraging one another to do their best. Each band had its particular songs, and its own peculiar way of dancing. Its chief's lodge was its headquarters, and there of an evening the members were wont to gather for a social time, for a little feast, singing, and story telling as the pipe went round the circle. ”

“ Then, while waiting for our evening meal, my uncle, Abbott, Pitamakan, and I held a war council out by the river-bank, where the men would not overhear our talk. They were a timid lot, French engagés all of them, and we did not want them to suspect how serious we thought our situation to be.
"The older I grow the less sense I have! I should have known better than to come down here with these few timid engagés to build a fort upon the most traveled war trail in the country," said my uncle. "I should have had ten—yes, twenty—more men. ”

“ The sun is good to us!"
"Yes. Good to us!" I answered.
I had no more than told my uncle and Tsistsaki briefly of our ride in quest of the Pikuni and listened to a short account of their trials with the thirst-crazed engagés when in the gathering dusk White Wolf and Heavy Runner and the other chiefs came up to us. They all knew the old Mandans and affectionately greeted them. Tsistsaki ran to her brother, White Wolf, and embraced him and cried a little with joy at seeing him again. We then all turned to the stockade, and my uncle called out to the Twins, "Josh, Lem, let those rascals go now! ”

“ And so it happened that only the lean people got a chance to speak, and the stout folks in their anger and vexation stayed away, at which the others declared themselves to be well pleased. But it was a mistake, for in this way they expelled "the quiet element"--as it was called--from the union, and in their stead the day-laborers crowded in, and now they were ready for the revolution. The only two people of comfortable dimensions who still remained in the Reformverein, were Schultz the carpenter and Uncle Bräsig. ”

“ White Wolf knocked the ashes from the smoke pipe, and the chiefs filed out of the lodge to go their homeward ways. As the women returned, I said to my chum, "Pitamakan, almost-brother, we are certainly going to see some exciting, perhaps dangerous times down in that On-the-Other-Side Bear River country!"
"Excitement, danger, they make life," he answered.
Tsistsaki, coming in, heard my remark. She turned to my uncle. "So, man mine, we go to the On-the-Other-Side Bear River country, do we? Yes? Oh, I am glad! Down there grow plenty of plums. I shall gather quantities of them for our winter use!" ”

“ As Abbott, the Twins, and I ran to it, Pitamakan hurried on to our lodge to rouse my uncle; and the engagés, who had been on watch with the Mandans, quietly slipped round awakening the inmates of the other lodges. I flipped the cover on the cannon, and, just as we got it into the passageway, the fight opened with shots and yells on the west side of the barricade. The thought flashed into my mind that Pitamakan had been right. It had been some of the enemy, lying concealed upon the slope, that our horses had shied from when we were driving them out to graze. ”

“ They would have wiped us out, had not the Twins discovered them down there in the timber. Now they plan to make us go mad from want of water and then wipe us out."
"You women, how much water have you?" Tsistsaki asked.
One by one they answered; there was not a bucketful in any lodge!
"Far Thunder, it is now time for my almost-brother and me to go after our people," Pitamakan said to my uncle impressively.
"It is! Go—as fast as you can!" he replied.
"I ride Is-spai-u," I said.
"You do not! He is our shield, it seems. You ride your own runner!" ”

“ Great Rider's words have come true: the cut-throats are attacking camp!"
We ran to the horses and fumbled at their hobbles; then we coiled the ropes of our picketed saddle-animals, mounted and drove the little band on the run for camp.
"There is no more shooting!" I exclaimed.
"Not another shot! It looks bad to me! Maybe our people are wiped out!" Pitamakan answered.
He expressed my own fear. We forced the horses to their utmost speed. It was all of three miles to the mouth of the Musselshell, and never were there such long miles. Day was breaking as we neared the valley rim overlooking camp. ”

“ Then we climbed to the rim of the plain and rode along it to camp. I had constantly to hold in Is-spai-u so that Pitamakan, riding my fast buffalo-runner, could keep up with me. It was dusk when we arrived in camp. The women—some of them, not Tsistsaki, you may be sure—cried out in alarm at the news that we had found the fresh trail of a war party traveling down the valley, and Louis wailed, "Pauvre me! Pauvre me! I am lose my pension; and now I shall be keeled by zese war parties! Oh, wat a countree terrible ees zis!"
"Oh, be still, Windy!" Sol Abbott growled at him. "You make us all tired! ”

“ Pitamakan said in the sign language so that the Mandans should understand.
"Well, let us hear," said my uncle.
"This is it," he went on. "The cut-throats want our scalps, but they want also Is-spai-u. A few of them laid in wait for my almost-brother and me, hoping to seize the runner when we drove the herd out last night; but they failed. The chiefs then planned to wait until we should bring the horses back into the barricade and kill us in a surprise attack as we all stood fighting their few men on the west side. Thus they would take no chances of shooting the black runner. ”

“ Every evening now he prayed the raven to give him a revealing vision of the cut-throats and any other enemies who might be approaching us, and his companions joined him in singing the songs to his medicine.
"Far Thunder, my man," said Tsistsaki, the first evening that we heard the old men praying and singing, "I feel that the gods are with us in this matter of our fort-building upon this hostile war trail. As fast as our troubles have come we have conquered them, and now come these five old men, whose leader is favored of the gods, to help us. ”

“ Smoke was rising from several of the lodges as I rushed into the camp, sprang from my horse in front of White Wolf's lodge, and dived into it.
"Hurry! Hurry! Call the warriors! The cut-throats are at our camp! Oh, why were you so slow in coming?" I all but shouted.
"Now, calm yourself! Excited ones can't talk straight—" White Wolf began.
But his head wife interrupted him by springing to my side, grabbing my arm, and fiercely crying, "My son—Pitamakan! ”

“ At about that time the other tribes of the Blackfeet and our allies, the Gros Ventres, arrived and went into camp at various points along the Musselshell and the Missouri. Crow Foot, chief of the Blackfoot tribe, brought us a letter from Carroll and Steell. I remember word for word a sentence or two in it: "Well, Wesley, by this time you have completed your War-Trail Fort, and you have done it by the merest scratch. Had the Pikuni been a day or two longer in arriving at the mouth of the Musselshell, your scalp would now be hanging in a Yanktonnais lodge. Aren't you the lucky man!" ”

“ But in one thing he was very different from the other young men of the camp: he made no close friends, and when not needed by Heavy Runner he wandered much by himself. Excepting his sister, whom he frequently took for long walks, he had little to say to any one, and so the people, all but she and his foster parents, continued to believe him crazy.
“One evening he said to Heavy Runner: ‘Tell me. What must one do to become a chief?’
“‘One must be very brave, must be fearless when facing the enemy, and of very kind heart ”

“ When Red Crow and I went into the Braves' lodge that evening, Mad Plume made us welcome, and indicated that we should sit at his left. That was the only space left; all the rest was occupied by his family, and members of the band, who also gave us pleasant greeting.
[Pg 168]
"Now, then, young men," Mad Plume said to us as soon as we were seated, "we have had our eyes upon you for some time, thinking to invite you to join us. We learned that you are good-hearted, generous, truthful, that you are good to the old. We but waited to learn what you would do before the enemy, and we learned ”

“ And yet I say that as she is suffering, so must she suffer a little longer for the good of the Pikuni. But not much longer. In a time like this what is one horse to any of us? Nothing! We will leave our tired horses right here, and if a Crow or other war party comes along and takes them—well, we shall probably recover them some day. Upon our fresh horses we can go this roundabout way and certainly arrive at the head of the big grove before sundown. Then we will wipe out those cut-throats, every last one of them, before it becomes too dark for us to shoot straight. ”

“ The gods have been very good to you to give you the power to wipe out that terrible, bad man, worst of all the men of the cut-throat tribe. Far Thunder, for what you have done the Earth-Houses People owe you much!"
"I wish that they were all here, all your warriors, for I am expecting to have a big fight with the cut-throats!" my uncle signed.
"We have sent for the warriors of my people to hurry down here and help us, but fear that they will not arrive before the cut-throats appear," Pitamakan put in. ”