They had now reached a more open part of the wood, and had glimpses of the rude fortress from between the trees.  It was a mere breastwork, as we have said, of logs and branches, with blankets, buffalo robes, and the leathern covers of lodges, extended round the top as a screen.  The movements of the leaders, as they groped their way, had been descried by the sharp-sighted enemy.  As Sinclair, who was in the advance, was putting some branches aside, he was shot through the body.  He fell on the spot.  “Take me to my brother,” said he to Campbell.  The latter gave him in charge to some of the men, who conveyed him out of the swamp.

Sublette now took the advance.  As he was reconnoitring the fort, he perceived an Indian peeping through an aperture.  In an instant his rifle was levelled and discharged, and the ball struck the savage in the eye.  While he was reloading, he called to Campbell, and pointed out to him the hole; “Watch that place,” said he, “and you will soon have a fair chance for a shot.”  Scarce had he uttered the words, when a ball struck him in the shoulder, and almost wheeled him around.  His first thought was to take hold of his arm with his other hand, and move it up and down.  He ascertained, to his satisfaction, that the bone was not broken.  The next moment he was so faint that he could not stand.  Campbell took him in his arms and carried him out of the thicket.  The same shot that struck Sublette wounded another man in the head.

A brisk fire was now opened by the mountaineers from the wood, answered occasionally from the fort.  Unluckily, the trappers and their allies, in searching for the fort, had got scattered, so that Wyeth, and a number of Nez Perces, approached the fort on the northwest side, while others did the same on the opposite quarter.  A cross-fire thus took place, which occasionally did mischief to friends as well as foes.  An Indian was shot down, close to Wyeth, by a ball which, he was convinced, had been sped from the rifle of a trapper on the other side of the fort.

The number of whites and their Indian allies had by this time so much increased by arrivals from the rendezvous, that the Blackfeet were completely overmatched.  They kept doggedly in their fort, however, making no offer of surrender.  An occasional firing into the breastwork was kept up during the day.  Now and then, one of the Indian allies, in bravado, would rush up to the fort, fire over the ramparts, tear off a buffalo robe or a scarlet blanket, and return with it in triumph to his comrades.  Most of the savage garrison that fell, however, were killed in the first part of the attack.

At one time it was resolved to set fire to the fort; and the squaws belonging to the allies were employed to collect combustibles.  This however, was abandoned; the Nez Perces being unwilling to destroy the robes and blankets, and other spoils of the enemy, which they felt sure would fall into their hands.