m, swarmed against the brush and rock
walls--the Blackfeet met them stanchly, and gave way not an inch--and
the fighting was terrible.

But over the barricade poured the Crows. In a moment the whole
interior was a dense mass of Indians, engaged hand to hand, and every
one yelling until, as said the white men, "The noise fairly lifted the
caps from our heads."

Guns and hatchets and clubs and knives rose and fell. The Crow women
were pressing to the outskirts, to kill the wounded enemy. Gradually
the weight of the Crows forced the Blackfeet back. The Blackfeet began
to emerge over the upper end of the fort--their faces still to the foe.

Presently all who might escape, were outside--but their enemies
surrounded them at once. The Blackfeet remaining were not many. They
never faltered nor signed surrender. They only sang their death
chants; and forming in close order they moved along the ridge like one
man, cutting a way with their knives.

By the half dozen they dropped; even those who dropped, fought until
they were dead. Soon the platoon was merely a squad; the squad melted
to a spot; there was a swirl, covering the spot; and the spot had been
washed out.

Not a Blackfoot was left, able to stand. The wounded who had lost
their weapons hurled taunts, as they lay helpless, until the Crows
finished them also. Truly had the Blackfeet yelled: "Come and take us!
But you will never take us alive!"

This night there was much mourning in the Crow camp. Thirty chiefs and
braves had been killed, twice that number wounded, and many horses
disabled. No prisoner had been brought in, to pay by torture. The
Blackfeet nation would look upon the fight as their victory.

So the Crow dead were buried; and into each grave of chief or brave
were placed his weapons and the shaved off mane and tail of his best
horse--for every hair would become a horse for him, in the spirit world.

CHAPTER XXI

THE STRONG MEDICINE OF KONATE (1839)

THE STORY OF THE KIOWA MAGIC STAFF

The Kiowas are of the great Athapascan family of Indians. In their war
days they ranged from the Platte River of western Nebraska down into
New Mexico and Texas. But their favorite hunting grounds lay south of
the Arkansas River of western Kansas and southeastern Colorado.

It was a desert country, of whity-yellow sand and sharp bare hills,
with the Rocky Mountains distant in the west, and the only green that
of the trees and brush along the wa