I did "bear a hand." The engagés, relieved of all fear of the enemy and anxious to move into snug, log-walled quarters, worked as I had never seen them work before. When in due time the Yellowstone II arrived with our large shipment of goods, we had a long stock-room and a trade-room ready to receive it; and in the early part of October the fort was completed, bastions and all, and the engagés were told to get in the winter firewood. At about that time the other tribes of the Blackfeet and our allies, the Gros Ventres, arrived and went into camp at various points along the Musselshell and the Missouri. Crow Foot, chief of the Blackfoot tribe, brought us a letter from Carroll and Steell. I remember word for word a sentence or two in it: "Well, Wesley, by this time you have completed your War-Trail Fort, and you have done it by the merest scratch. Had the Pikuni been a day or two longer in arriving at the mouth of the Musselshell, your scalp would now be hanging in a Yanktonnais lodge. Aren't you the lucky man!" "I certainly am! And thankful, too, to the good God for all his mercies!" exclaimed my uncle when he had read it. From that remark you will see that he had not altogether forgotten his early religious training. Perhaps you can imagine how Pitamakan and I kicked up our heels when, one fine October morning, my uncle announced that we were free to roam wherever we pleased. The Pikuni were going to hunt and trap along the foot of the Snowy Mountains and the upper reaches of the Musselshell and its tributaries, and we went with them and had great adventures. At Christmas-time we returned to the fort with more than our full share of beaver pelts. From then until spring I was kept busy in the fort day after day helping in the trade for the furs and robes that came to us in a perfect stream. In the following June our shipment totaled seven thousand fine head-and-tail buffalo robes; twenty-one hundred beaver pelts; four thousand elk, deer, and antelope skins; and about three thousand wolf pelts. After receiving the statement of the sale of them in St. Louis my uncle clapped his hands and laughed and cried out: "Tsistsaki, Thomas, this is how we stand: all our bills are paid, and we are ahead one good fort and forty-two thousand dollars in cash!" "Ha! What happiness is ours!" my almost-mother exclaimed. "And," said I, "we are not asking for goods on credit for next winter's trade, are we?" THE END The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS U. S. A. End of Project Gutenberg's The War-Trail Fort, by James Willard Schultz