Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/265

 use the mules for packing these to camp. Papa Clair, you and Lander see to loading them. I must crowd the fighting a little more. Git after 'em, Jim Baker. Give 'em their needin's, men. Take the fight out of them. We must have time to load forty packs of prime beaver."

"Ain't that younker's medicine all, Jim?" bawled Baker as he dashed away to force the fighting.

Under Papa Clair's direction Lander and a score of Crows rounded up what horses were not yet captured. The Crows had left their own animals outside the pocket, and now once more in the saddle they attacked the retreating enemy more confidently, their big bows twanging out the death sentence. And as they formed in a long line across the pocket the trappers fell back and exchanged their mules for ponies.

As fast as the mules were brought to him Papa Clair superintended the loading of them—two hundred pounds to each animal—and worked as serenely as he would have in the big camp. In short time the cavalcade began retiring toward the cañon; the trappers coming next with a screen of Crows to discourage counter-attacks.

The Blackfeet had lost virtually all their stock