The three sentinels would have to be taken out. The choice of executioners was given to Sam. He knew that it would be foolish to call for volunteers; they would all volunteer. Knowing that Dan was dying to be one of them, he assigned to him the varmint on the southeast. Because the one on the bluff would be the most difficult of the three to ambush he gave him to Three-Finger. He then looked round him at the men and thought he saw in the night gloom a special eagerness in the eyes of David Black. "All right, Dave, the one on the northeast is yours."
It was a dark night with wolves baying and the hoot owl forecasting storm. All the men lay down but they were all awake. Listening, the only sounds Sam could hear were from a night bird, a wolf, and an owl. Two hours later the party rode two thirds of the way and concealed their horses in an aspen thicket. The sky was low and dark, and huge drops of rain were falling when the men resumed their journey. How wonderful it would be, Sam thought, looking up at the dark wet sky, if at the moment of attack the Creator would fill the world with a thunderous theme of vengeance, with chords like those that opened the Fifth!
They moved forward almost as silently as the wolf, until they were met by the returning scouts. McNees had told them that he and the other two would need only a half hour. Well, mebbe, Sam thought; Dan was not as fast as the other two. They were still two miles from the Indian camp when Sam, now leading the twenty, was astonished to see a tall figure come out of night shadows, hesitate a moment, and advance toward him. It was McNees, with a wet scalp in his hand; This was not the way Sam had planned it, and he was wondering about Dave and Dan, when McNees began to whisper around the group that everything was ready for the huggin. Dan and Dave were about a mile ahead, waiting. They had found all three sentinels dozing, and had one hand over their mouth and a knife through them before they could move. The camp was sound asleep. There were dogs in the camp, McNees said; their horses were southwest around the base of the bluff and no guard was with them. They would approach from the southeast, for the wind that way would be in their faces and those asleep would hear only the hurrycane. Waugh! Sam was thinking: no wonder this man was known as one of the three best scouts in the West, the other two being Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. Still whispering, McNees said that as they approached there would be five tents in a row, facing them; about twenty feet beyond them was a larger tent, in which the chief would be snoring and dreaming of glory. Around it, on the south in a semicircle, were nine smaller tepees. Some of the varmints were not under cover, and because the rain might arouse them it was best to hurry along. By the time McNees had ceased whispering the men had in mind a map of the situation and they knew that in the five skin tents facing the east were the chief’s mightiest warriors. Every man but Sam, whose mind was on the chief, hoped to be the first to reach the five tents.
They moved forward in a drizzle of rain. After a mile Dan came in from darkness and joined them. When about three hundreds yards from the camp the party halted; the men would now creep forward as silently as the wolf, for each of them wore three pairs of moccasins. Each had a revolver in his belt and a long Bowie. After fifty yards Dave Black rose as if out of the earth and slipped forward with them. When Sam and the dozen men abreast of him were about a hundred and fifty feet from the first tents they stopped, resting on one knee and a palm; and Sam looked round him at the men behind. Not even the breathing of a single man could have been heard but in any moment they expected to hear the dogs explode in alarm and fury. For another fifty feet they all slunk soundlessly forward, and then Sam straightened, a knife flashing in his hand. This was the signal. In the next moment the camp and the mountains behind it and the whole earth roundabout were shattered by a war cry that stiffened every sleeping Indian. In almost the same instant the men rushed forward at full speed and the camp’s dogs came awake. For a few fatal moments the redmen were drugged by sleep and shocked by terror, and during those moments it was all over for most of them. Not one Indian in live knew what struck him.
Elk Horns knew. Sam took care of that. While the horrible cries were still echoing in the mountain night Sam in a flash was between two of the sentinel tents and over to the chief. The redman came up fast and met Sam at the flap door. While racing forward Sam had returned the knife to his belt because at close quarters he preferred to light with his hands. At the tent door he seized the man by his two arms and wrenched him with such force that the hatchet fell from his hand. In the same moment Sam spat in his face and then flung him headlong backward across his shoulder. He swung then to a guard who had rushed out of the tent and drove his knife through him; and the next instant he seized the chief, brought him to his feet with a jolt that almost fractured his leg bones, again spat in his face, and slapped a red cheek so hard with the flat of his hand that the chief almost fell. "It’s me!" Sam roared in the helpless man’s face, and again uttering the dreadful war cry, he seized the chief with both hands just under his ribs and heaved him up and straight over his head. He was then on top of him, bloody knife in his hand, and while the stunned chief lay helpless Sam took his scalp.
Scalp in one hand and knife in the other, he leapt back and in morning gloom surveyed the scene. On his left he heard the footfalls of men chasing men. He heard a cry choked off in blood. Looking the other way, he saw a white man taking a scalp, and a bloody Indian rushing at him with raised tomahawk. Sam leapt, felled the man, and saved the life of Hank Cady. Hank had always been a little careless in battle. What Sam was looking for was a live Indian to send as a messenger, and when he saw a redskin leap up from a half dozen prone bodies and make a desperate spurt for freedom Sam was after him like a cougar. He overtook him in about a hundred yards and flung him down. He felt over him for weapons but this brave had none. Sam turned the Indian onto his belly, knelt on his back, and cut leather strings out of the Indian’s elkskin jacket. With these he bound the man’s hands behind him and was securing him to a tree when he heard his name called.
"Here I am!" Sam cried.
It was all over by then. A few wounded Indians had fled with mountain men after them, who one by one returned with their scalps. No one yet knew if any had escaped. No one knew if McNees had been right in his count. Sam and Bill and Mick walked among the dead, trying to count them; and George came up with his habitual smile and said one was dead over yonder, and another over there. Had any of the varmints got away? They didn’t know, Sam said. Dan and McNees were out of sight, probably chasing someone. Had any mountain man got hurt? Well, there was Cy Gregg over there, limping like a man with a broken leg; and Tomahawk Jack, who in his eagerness at scalping had sliced most of the meat off two of his fingers; and Abe Jackson, whose collarbone had been cut in two by a tomahawk. So far as Sam knew, no white man had been killed. As for the dogs, they had all vanished into thin air, and Bill thought that some of the red devils might have taken to wings too. They’d never know until they had counted them. In full daylight Sam and Bill and a few others tried to count the dead bodies scattered over the area but could not agree on the number. Sam then turned to the wounded. Abe had a nasty cut all right, through his collarbone and the two ribs next to it, but like all mountain men he pretended that it was nothing at all. It was because of his doggone awkwardness, he said. Some of the men chewed tobacco and gave him the quids, and Abe pushed them into the wound. Jack had made a small fire and with a hot knife point was trying to cauterize and cicatrize his wounds; and Abe, watching him, said he could use some of that medicine. Even Three-Finger had a wound, a knife-thrust in his shoulder, and into it moistened tobacco was stuffed. Zeke had slashed himself across a palm; another man while chasing an Indian in the dark had struck a tree and knocked five or six of his front teeth out. Mick Boone had torn a thumbnail off. Sam said they would examine the booty to see if there was anything any of them wanted and then they would bend the barrels and burn the stocks off the guns. He told Hank to choose five or six men and ride Indian ponies back to their horses and then go out and find elk for breakfast.