The
horse of the young Bostonian, who was in front, wheeled round with
affright, and threw his unskilled rider. The young man scrambled up
the side of the hill, but, unaccustomed to such wild scenes, lost his
presence of mind, and stood, as if paralyzed, on the edge of a bank,
until the Blackfeet came up and slew him on the spot. His comrades had
fled on the first alarm; but two of them, Foy and Stephens, seeing
his danger, paused when they got half way up the hill, turned back,
dismounted, and hastened to his assistance. Foy was instantly killed.
Stephens was severely wounded, but escaped, to die five days afterward.
The survivors returned to the camp of Captain Sublette, bringing tidings
of this new disaster. That hardy leader, as soon as he could bear the
journey, set out on his return to St. Louis, accompanied by Campbell. As
they had a number of pack-horses richly laden with peltries to convoy,
they chose a different route through the mountains, out of the way, as
they hoped, of the lurking bands of Blackfeet. They succeeded in making
the frontier in safety. We remember to have seen them with their band,
about two or three months afterward, passing through a skirt of woodland
in the upper part of Missouri. Their long cavalcade stretched in single
file for nearly half a mile. Sublette still wore his arm in a sling.
The mountaineers in their rude hunting dresses, armed with rifles
and roughly mounted, and leading their pack-horses down a hill of the
forest, looked like banditti returning with plunder.
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