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6.

We spent the first couple of days familiarising ourselves with the lay of the land. It was a harsh country of great mountains and sweeping valleys filled with ponderosa pines and white oak. The wildlife was as varied as the fauna. Flitting swifts and whippoorwills vied Kingfishers and the mighty eagle. In the field there was deer and antelope along with the big cats, mountain lions. The locals called them Tigers. Then, there was the king of this abundant domain…the great Grizzly bear.

Man-eater?

Only if you cross him. Actually, you'd be more likely to cross her not him. It is the female of the species that does most of the work. Is that how it should be or is it that it just is? If you catch my drift.I have never known a bear to actually eat a human being but I have known them to kill plenty. Then, one day when the rain came, we were talking by the mouth of a small cave and I asked Cody what exactly was Red Deer's problem with us whites.

"Goes back a long way, Poncho," explained Cody as we drank coffee and smoked our tobacco. "'Ppears that way back a bunch of white mountaineers were exploring here about when they came across a tribe of friendly Nez Pierce. The Injuns welcomed the men to their camp and gave them food and shelter and looked after all their needs and wants. They were never cold of a night time, if ya take my meaning," he winked. Then, "After bein' looked after in this manner fer a spell, somethin' went wrong; what it was, no one seems to know, probably a fight o'er women er some such thing. Anyway, the outcome of it was that one of the mountaineers shot dead a man and a woman of the tribe.

Turns out that they were Red Deer's mom and dad. Course, he was only a nipper back then, but he never forgot and he swore revenge on all the white eyes and he's been keeping that promise ever since. That's about the all of it as I recollect."
I took the words in and said nothing for a while but Munroe wanted to know all the juicy details. And Buffalo Bill Cody gave some indication that day of the man that was yet to be by providing Munroe with the requested information. He seemed only too willing to tell all in every gory, blood soaked detail.
Despite the rain, I went for a walk.

The following day we were up early and we had broken camp by first light. It had been decided the night before that we should split up and search for sign of Red Deer and his renegades from three separate directions. I headed south then west whilst Munroe went north then west and Cody took the middle route directly west. We were to meet at nightfall at a place called Benson's Bluff. We had also prearranged that if anything were to happen or define sign of the Indian's was gained, we would discharge three shots from out rifles to alert the others. We would never be without earshot of the rifles.

The ground I was covering was a mixture of grassy meadows, stunted oak trees and rocky outcrops - a sure sign that we were climbing higher and higher into the Rockies.

After about three hours of strenuous going, I decided to rest the mules and my mount by a free flowing stream. I drank from the stream first and topped up my canteens then I allowed the animals to take water until they had had their fill.
Settling down under the shade of a convenient oak, I took to making a smoke when, all of a sudden, three shots from a rifle rented the still air. Immediately I jumped up and climbed into my saddle making sure as I did so, that the two mules were tied securely to the pommel. As fast as I could I made my way toward the sound of the rifle shots. But the going was tough with the two pack animals in tow. More shots rang out and my heart started to beat faster and faster. The shots were coming from the north and that meant that it was Munroe that was in trouble. Mighty big trouble too considering the amount of shooting that was going on.

As I approached the scene of the skirmish, I saw that Munroe was holed up behind a large, dead fallen oak and that Cody was already with him. I dismounted and ground tied the animals as I pulled my lever action from its scabbard and shucked a round into the breech. I got myself in to a good position atop of a low hillock that looked directly down onto the firefight below. There was a bleak clearing of some fifty yards between Munroe, Cody and the enemy and the smoke from the rifles clung to the earth like a flowing, grey blanket.

Observing the enemy for the first time, I was amazed to see that it wasn't the expected renegade Indians but a group of some seven or eight white men!
Of course, I was stunned, as I had assumed that it would be Red Deer and his Braves we were up against not other Americans. I took a deep breath and let it go slowly in an attempt to calm my shaking nerves. I had been involved in more than a few fistfights before but I had never been a part of a real, bona fide gunfight. My hands were shaking and I could feel the veins in my temple pulsating rapidly. But I had to pull myself together if I was to be of any use to my friends. I had no time to think about how such a situation had come about; all of that could wait till later. What mattered now was getting out of there alive and all in one piece.