Sublette now took the advance. As he was reconnoitring the fort, he
perceived an Indian peeping through an aperture. In an instant his rifle
was levelled and discharged, and the ball struck the savage in the eye.
While he was reloading, he called to Campbell, and pointed out to him
the hole; "Watch that place," said he, "and you will soon have a fair
chance for a shot." Scarce had he uttered the words, when a ball struck
him in the shoulder, and almost wheeled him around. His first thought
was to take hold of his arm with his other hand, and move it up and
down. He ascertained, to his satisfaction, that the bone was not broken.
The next moment he was so faint that he could not stand. Campbell took
him in his arms and carried him out of the thicket. The same shot that
struck Sublette wounded another man in the head.

A brisk fire was now opened by the mountaineers from the wood, answered
occasionally from the fort. Unluckily, the trappers and their allies, in
searching for the fort, had got scattered, so that Wyeth, and a number
of Nez Perces, approached the fort on the northwest side, while others
did the same on the opposite quarter. A cross-fire thus took place,
which occasionally did mischief to friends as well as foes. An Indian
was shot down, close to Wyeth, by a ball which, he was convinced, had
been sped from the rifle of a trapper on the other side of the fort.

The number of whites and their Indian allies had by this time so much
increased by arrivals from the rendezvous, that the Blackfeet were
completely overmatched. They kept doggedly in their fort, however,
making no offer of surrender. An occasional firing into the breastwork
was kept up during the day. Now and then, one of the Indian allies, in
bravado, would rush up to the fort, fire over the ramparts, tear off a
buffalo robe or a scarlet blanket, and return with it in triumph to his
comrades. Most of the savage garrison that fell, however, were killed in