The Last Crossing (49 page)

Potts and the McKays finally set out on the trail of the war party, following a track stamped as clear in the sleet as muddy footprints on a bedsheet. They ride up one of the countless coulees that slash the valley of the Belly, deep notches overhung by towering, crumbling banks fantastically weathered and scarred by wind and rain.

A roof-pitch climb up treacherous ground is hard going. At times the horses balk, refuse to take another step, and their riders must spring off their backs, take the reins and lead them. The scrambling mustangs send small, slippery avalanches of dirt and gravel down the slope.

At last, horses and riders stumble up on to the plain. The morning wind greets the half-breeds with the muted sound of distant battle, the flat crack of repeaters, the dull thump of Hudson Bay muskets, faint cries. Laying quirts to their lathered mounts, they whip them into a final, frantic gallop just as Sun’s forehead flares above the horizon, staining the chalk-white plain the deep red of heart’s blood.

Potts and the McKays reach high ground overlooking the battle just as Mountain Chief and his men are readying themselves to join the fray. Before them, a thousand Blackfoot, Cree, and Assiniboine are engaged in a running skirmish that sprawls over a mile of prairie. The bodies of men and horses dot the whiteness, marking the ebb and flow of the engagement. The cold morning pops with gunfire, rings with war whoops as riders clash in single combat. Those warriors who are afoot loose arrows, parry lance thrusts with parfleche shields, batter one another with stone war clubs, swing empty muskets into the faces of attackers. Some break and flee, are chased down and shot, hacked, stabbed.

Potts jostles his pony to the side of Mountain Chief and his son Big Brave. Big Brave is in a trance-like state. Slowly he lifts and lowers
his medicine shield to the rise and fall of his death chant. Over and over he sonorously sings, “My body will be lying on the plains. My body will be lying on the plains.” His face is blackened with charcoal; his eye sockets are circled with vermilion. A beaded horse mask of identical colour and design hides his pony’s face. The eyes of the horse flash wildly within the vermilion rings. Potts senses the power rising from man and horse; the heat of strong war medicine. Laying his hand on the cat skin over his heart, he asks it to help him today, to bless him with courage and cunning.

Mountain Chief turns to Potts, indicates the hundreds of warriors darting and shifting about on the plain, the bodies strewn on the ground, the horses trotting aimlessly with empty saddles on their backs. “I did not think I would live so long to see such a fight,” says Mountain Chief.

Potts does not answer. Big Brave’s chanting drums in his ear. He has spotted several dozen Cree who have learned a lesson from their cousins, the Métis. The Cree have dug a ring of rifle pits in the sod against which Piegan riders launch brave but fruitless sorties that are turned aside with withering volleys of musket fire.

Mountain Chief flicks his forefinger at the Cree horsemen sweeping back and forth in fluid attack and counterattack. “Which fat Cree cow do you choose to run, Bear Child?”

Potts shakes his head, thrusts his finger to the men in the shallow foxholes methodically loading and firing. “No!” he shouts. “We must go down against those fighters there! All together as one! We must smash into them hard, make them run.”

Big Brave’s song breaks off. “Yes!” he cries. “Do as Bear Child says! Listen to Bear Child!”

Potts trots his pony up the line of silent warriors, their bonnet feathers twitching in the wind. “No one must try to count first coup. We must act for the good of all. Any man who thinks only of his own advantage in the buffalo hunt is punished, his lodge is cut to pieces, and scorn heaped on his head. We must hunt the Crees as we do the buffalo, together, no man ahead of the rest. Do you understand?”

Agreement rumbles through the line of Blackfoot. Potts turns his horse, draws his revolver. “Now let us go down! Let us make the Cree pay for killing the brother of Red Crow, for killing our women and children! Make this a day to be painted in the winter count!”

They charge in a predatory wave, singing and shouting battle cries. A score of Cree turn to face the clatter of hooves on frozen ground, the wild rush of horsemen bearing down fast on them. The muskets of the Cree crash, a single clap of noise, of rolling smoke. Potts sees Ugly Man go over the head of his gut-shot roan. Two ponies bolt madly ahead of the Blackfoot, running flat out, riders thrown or shot from their backs.

Mountain Chief’s men burst among the Cree fighters. One of them tackles Potts’s leg, yanking desperately to pull him from his pony. Potts bangs the part in the Cree’s hair so hard with his pistol butt that the grip cracks in his hand. The Cree falls beneath the feet of his horse. Potts jerks one rein, twisting the pony clear, and fires twice into the man reeling in a rifle pit.

Mountain Chief is shouting to tell his men that the Cree have broken and are fleeing their crude emplacements. Afoot or mounted, they dash for a nearby coulee. A squat, stocky Cree runs by Potts; Potts leans backward in the saddle and snaps a shot over the rump of his pony. The impact of the bullet flings the Cree’s arms into the air, hurtles him so hard to the earth that the sleet squirts and scatters.

Mountain Chief, hanging on to his terrified, bucking pony, stubbornly clutches the long hair of a Cree. The Cree goes under the pony’s belly, snarling its legs. Mountain Chief releases his hold, fights to bring his horse under control, then rides the stunned Cree down, striking him again and again with his coup stick.

Potts catches a flick of colour amid the black-haired Cree headed for the ravine, a head as bright as a September poplar leaf. A tall golden-haired man is covering the retreat. On foot, he calmly backs towards the coulee, keeping up a steady fire with a Many Shots rifle, holding the Blackfoot off as his friends race for shelter.

Potts screams to the Blackfoot, “Cut them down before they reach the coulee! Do not let them get to the coulee!” But Mountain Chief’s
men have been joined by mounted Peigans and Blackfoot who hold only one thought in their minds, rub out every enemy they can lay hands upon. Potts cannot turn them aside from the slaughter. Blood mingles with sleet, turning the ground slippery with a pink slush.

More Cree and Assiniboine are reaching the safety of the gully as the Blackfoot round up Cree horses, gather captured weapons, brandish scalps. Horses snort their terror, nostrils filled with the smell of man-blood.

Potts had thought Ugly Man was killed in the charge, but he is limping about, waving a revolver he captured from a Cree. “I will kill Crees with their own gun!” he shouts. “I will make them feel their weapons as our people have!”

Potts understands what a bad mistake the Blackfoot have made in letting the foe slip through their fingers. Almost all the Cree and Assiniboine horseman have taken cover in the coulee. Potts sees Curly Hair is now beside his brother, protecting the retreat of the last riders chased by the Blackfoot. The Sutherlands’ blond hair flies in the wind as they aim and fire. The lower halves of their faces are painted bright blue, a marking that is clear even at a distance. Potts had never thought he would live to see yellow-haired men with paint on their white skins.

“Come with me!” Potts shouts. “Come with me to the coulee that runs beside the one the Crees hide in!” He trots his pony among the Blackfoot, feverishly gesturing, striking some with his quirt to catch their attention. The younger warriors heed him. “Go with Bear Child! Follow Bear Child!” They leap up on their horses as Potts wheels his pony and gallops away, hanging off his pony’s side, snapping revolver shots at the Sutherland boys as they slip down into the gulch.

Now everyone pelts after Bear Child, the warriors of the Blood, the Piegan, the North Blackfoot, all desperate to get at the Cree sheltering in the gully. Mountain Chief, whose horse was shot out from under him in the last minutes of the fight, rides behind Unborn Calf, arms wrapped tight around his waist, bouncing up and down on the hindquarters of McKay’s pony. Big Brave races his grey horse alongside them to shield his father and the half-breed from the Cree
muskets spitting balls at them from the coulee. He taunts the enemy, flourishes a scalp above his head. Today, in his first big fight, the son of Mountain Chief has already sent three Cree to their deaths.

Led by Potts, the Blackfoot spill down into the gorge, a throng of hundreds of excited men and horses, all thrashing about in confusion. Potts dismounts, starts climbing the side of the coulee, grasping the tough juniper bushes, jabbing a purchase in the soft face of the incline with his moccasined-toes, calling out to the others to follow him. In moments, scores of men are scaling the slope, squirming their way to the top. A few Cree shoot down at them, but are forced back from their exposed position by the fire of the Blackfoot guarding the horses in the bottom of the coulee.

The two gulches wind along cheek by jowl. In places, as little as ten yards separate them. The sides of the coulees act as natural ramparts along which the Cree and Blackfoot distribute themselves, firing whenever an enemy’s head bobs into sight. The roar of musketry is a solid wall of sound, rifle smoke forms an impenetrable cloud along the narrow strip separating the combatants. The engagement has become a battle fought in a blinding fog.

Here and there, warriors rush each other’s positions, heave boulders down on heads, empty their guns into enemies who are briefly visible in the drifting pall, grapple with ghosts suddenly become flesh. In the crooks of the gulches, isolated pockets of Cree and Blackfoot fight hand to hand. Trapped men turn badger, dig the earth furiously with knives and hatchets, scrape dirt with their fingers in an attempt to provide themselves with a scrap of cover.

The battle teeters back and forth, one side or the other winning isolated victories. Calf Shirt staggers over to Potts and drops down beside him. An arrow has pierced his wrist. “You are wounded,” Potts shouts above the din. “I must draw that arrow for you.”

Calf Shirt pants in agony, but violently shakes his head. He pulls Potts down so he can speak directly into his ear. “My father painted my face this morning. He told me that he was given a vision that told him I must not pull any arrow from my flesh as long as this fight lasts. If I did as he said, the arrow would be my friend and help me. There
were two Cree around that bend that turns to the east; everyone warned me off them because they had already killed several of us.” Calf Shirt lifts a broad, double-edge knife with his good hand, twisting the blade. “But I was certain this knife from my bear medicine bundle would overcome them. I armed myself with it and attacked. One of the Cree shot me with an arrow, but I did not let the pain stop me. I seized his bow with my wounded hand and snapped it like a twig. His arrow was a gift that made me strong. I drove my bear knife into him again. The other Cree became afraid of my power and ran, but I overtook him and killed him too. So you see, the arrow must not be drawn from my body until this day’s work is completed.”

“I understand,” says Potts.

Calf Shirt sighs contentedly, closes his eyes. “Let me rest here for a few moments and feel this arrow. When it rouses my anger I will go back and give some other raider a taste of my bear knife.”

Potts leaves Calf Shirt, runs stooped along the lip of the ridge, firing his pistols whenever he catches a glimpse of a Cree. When his revolvers empty, he dives back into the coulee, and from there he spies a low butte looking down on the Cree position.

Suddenly, just above him, Potts hears the sound of singing. His eyes shoot upward. An old Cree looms out of the smoke above him, grey hair fanned on his shoulders. His eyes are closed, his face is lifted to the sky, his lips are moving. Potts can just make out the refrain. “I am old. Hear that I am ready to die. Take me now.”

Potts leaves the Cree with his old man’s wish, his old man’s courage, and retraces his steps. Hurrying through the ravine, he finds the Montana Peigans, many of whom carry repeaters, and shouts into their ears what they must do. As they steal up the ravine, he sends the McKay brothers after them, and then collects the young men, tells them to mount up and wait for his signal.

Shortly, the McKays and the Peigans open up a terrific assault from the heights that Potts directed them to. The Cree and Assiniboine are unnerved by this sudden onslaught from an unexpected quarter. The bullets of the Many Shots rip into them, drive them back down
the narrow confines of the gulch. Disorder spreads, a mob of panicked warriors cascades down the coulee, a swift-running river of Cree, a spate of heaving heads.

Potts looses his horsemen after them. The time has finally arrived to run the cows just as in the buffalo hunt.

The Blackfoot pursue them hard, killing everyone they overtake, harrying them onward as the Cree flee down the slope of the coulee. They push the Cree braves like their fathers did the Big Hairys in the old days, driving them over a thirty-foot drop to the river. As their enemies tumble over the brink, the most impetuous of the Blackfoot warriors leap their horses over the cliff after them. Ponies break legs, topple, roll, squeal with pain. The air curdles with the screams of the dying.

Potts reins in his pony. The Cree who have made it to the Belly are wading into the freezing water, churning it into foam. They are packed so tight a man could close his eyes, fire, and be sure of killing himself one. Potts yanks the Henry out of his scabbard. “Shoot the Cree in the water! Do not let them cross!” he shouts, and bodies begin to drop, the dead and wounded Cree spinning downstream in the current. The brown water of the Belly colours, shows threads of scarlet, then coiled ropes of red.

On the east side of the river, numb, exhausted Cree who have fought their way across the river drag themselves up the muddy bank. Already, Blackfoot are fording the Belly in pursuit. Potts spots the Sutherlands halting the fleeing Cree, turning them back to make a stand. He heels his pony down the steep bank and into the high river grass, eager to face Yellow Hair and his brother.