“You are all fools and old women,” he said to the Crows; “come with me, if any of you are brave enough, and I will show you how to fight.”

He threw off his trapper’s frock of buckskin and stripped himself naked like the Indians themselves.  He left his rifle on the ground, and taking in his hand a small light hatchet, he ran over the prairie to the right, concealed by a hollow from the eyes of the Blackfeet.  Then climbing up the rocks, he gained the top of the precipice behind them.  Forty or fifty young Crow warriors followed him.  By the cries and whoops that rose from below he knew that the Blackfeet were just beneath him; and running forward, he leaped down the rock into the midst of them.  As he fell he caught one by the long loose hair and dragging him down tomahawked him; then grasping another by the belt at his waist, he struck him also a stunning blow, and gaining his feet, shouted the Crow war-cry.  He swung his hatchet so fiercely around him that the astonished Blackfeet bore back and gave him room.  He might, had he chosen, have leaped over the breastwork and escaped; but this was not necessary, for with devilish yells the Crow warriors came dropping in quick succession over the rock among their enemies.  The main body of the Crows, too, answered the cry from the front and rushed up simultaneously.  The convulsive struggle within the breastwork was frightful; for an instant the Blackfeet fought and yelled like pent-up tigers; but the butchery was soon complete, and the mangled bodies lay piled up together under the precipice.  Not a Blackfoot made his escape.

As Paul finished his story we came in sight of Richard’s Fort.  It stood in the middle of the plain; a disorderly crowd of men around it, and an emigrant camp a little in front.

“Now, Paul,” said I, “where are your Winnicongew lodges?”

“Not come yet,” said Paul, “maybe come to-morrow.”

Two large villages of a band of Dakota had come three hundred miles from the Missouri, to join in the war, and they were expected to reach Richard’s that morning.  There was as yet no sign of their approach; so pushing through a noisy, drunken crowd, I entered an apartment of logs and mud, the largest in the fort; it was full of men of various races and complexions, all more or less drunk.  A company of California emigrants, it seemed, had made the discovery at this late day that they had encumbered themselves with too many supplies for their journey.  A part, therefore, they had thrown away or sold at great loss to the traders, but had determined to get rid of their copious stock of Missouri whisky, by drinking it on the spot.  Here were maudlin squaws stretched on piles of buffalo robes; squalid Mexicans, armed with bows and arrows; Indians sedately drunk; long-haired Canadians and trappers, and American backwoodsmen in brown homespun, the well-beloved pistol and bowie knife displayed openly at their sides.  In the middle of the room a tall, lank man, with a dingy