They came slowly, not in a wild charge, not yelling, but chanting.  The upper and right-hand bodies were Crows.  Their faces were painted black, for war and for revenge.  The band on the left were wild men, on active half-broke horses, their weapons for the most part bows and arrows.  They later found these to be Bannacks, belonging anywhere but here, and in any alliance rather than with the Crows from east of the Pass.

Nor did the latter belong here to the south and west, far off their own great hunting range.  Obviously what Carson, Bridger, Jackson had said was true.  All the tribes were in league to stop the great invasion of the white nation, who now were bringing their women and children and this thing with which they buried the buffalo.  They meant extermination now.  They were taking their time and would take their revenge for the dead who lay piled before the white man’s barricade.

The emigrants rolled back a pair of wagons, and the cattle were crowded through, almost over the human occupants of the oblong.  The gap was closed.  All the remaining cargo packages were piled against the wheels, and the noncombatants sheltered in that way.  Shovels deepened the trench here or there as men sought better to protect their families.

And now in a sudden melee of shouts and yells, of trampling hoofs and whirling colors, the first bands of the Crows came charging up in the attempt to carry away their dead of yesterday.  Men stooped to grasp a stiffened wrist, a leg, a belt; the ponies squatted under ghastly dragging burdens.

But this brought them within pistol range.  The reports of the white men’s weapons began, carefully, methodically, with deadly accuracy.  There was no panic.  The motionless or the struggling blotches ahead of the wagon park grew and grew.  A few only of the Crows got off with bodies of their friend’s or relatives.  One warrior after another dropped.  They were used to killing buffalo at ten yards.  The white rifles killed their men now regularly at a hundred.  They drew off, out of range.

Meantime the band from the westward was rounding up and driving off every animal that had not been corralled.  The emigrants saw themselves in fair way to be set on foot.

Now the savage strategy became plain.  The fight was to be a siege.

“Look!” Again a leader pointed.

Crouched now, advancing under cover of the shallow cut-bank, the headdresses of a score of the Western tribesmen could be seen.  They sank down.  The ford was held, the water was cut off!  The last covering fringe of willows also was held.  On every side the black-painted savages sat their ponies, out of range.  There could be no more water or grass for the horses and cattle, no wood for the camp.

There was no other concerted charge for a long time.  Now and then some painted brave, chanting a death song, would ride slowly toward the wagon park, some dervish vow actuating him or some bravado impelling him.  But usually he fell.