. Lewis and Drouillard lay down and slept with the Indians, while the two Fields boys kept guard by the fire at the door of the tent.
"Let go my gun."
It was the voice of Drouillard in the half-light of the tent at sunrise struggling with a Blackfoot. With a start Lewis awoke and reached for his gun. It was gone. The deft thieves had all but disarmed the entire party.
Chase followed. In the scuffle for his gun, Reuben Fields stabbed a Blackfoot to the heart.
No sooner were the guns recovered than the horses were gone. "Leave the horses or I will shoot," shouted Lewis, chasing out of breath to a steep notch in the river bluffs. Madly the Indians were tearing away with the horses. Lewis fired and killed a Blackfoot. Bareheaded, the Captain felt a returning bullet whistle through his hair, but the Indians dropped the horses, and away went swimming across the Marias.
Delay meant death. Quickly saddling their horses, Lewis and his men made for the Missouri as fast as possible, hearing at every step in imagination the pursuing "hoo-oh! whoop-ah-hooh!" that was destined to make Marias River the scene of many a bloody massacre by the vengeful Blackfeet.
Expecting interception at the mouth of Marias River, the white men rode with desperation to form a junction with their friends. All day, all night they galloped, until, exhausted, they halted at two o'clock in the morning to rest their flagging horses.
That forenoon, having ridden one hundred and twenty miles since the skirmish, they reached the mouth of Marias River, just in time to see Sergeant Gass, the fleet of canoes, and all, descending from above. Leaping from their horses, they took to the boats, and soon left the spot, seventy, eighty, a hundred miles a day, down the swift Missouri.
