Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/194

 across their ponies. The Crows, superb horsemen, rushed them from all sides, riding low like Comanches with only the tip of a moccasin showing. But although outnumbering their hereditary enemies, the Crows accomplished nothing more than to slay or severely wound three men and to drive them all away from the river. Baker returned to the river and built a fire.

He began cooking buffalo meat and urged Lander to eat. "They'll gobble down everything when they git here," he warned.

Lander was not hungry. The spectacle of the two dead warriors sickened him.

A rumbling clatter of hoofs and much demoniac yelling and the white men were surrounded by the Crows. The first to arrive leaped to the ground and began feasting on the buffalo. The leader, a weathered wisp of a man, whose hair and skin looked dead but whose eyes were two fires, walked up to Lander and yanked the rifle from his hand. Lander reached to his boot.

"Keep away from that knife!" snarled Baker. "Jest smile."

The leader wheeled on Baker and reached out to appropriate his rifle. The mountain man laughed in his face and taunted: