Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  “That’s right!” Ousterholt said with an evil grin. “Let’s take this goddamned village: grab ol’ Looking Glass and his boys afore they can put up a fight. You’re wasting time jawing with me when there’s killing to be done!”

  Whipple’s horse suddenly sidestepped, fighting the bit, the instant an arrow quivered in its rear flank.

  “Fire!” the captain bellowed in frustration—at these two hotheaded civilians and those Indians across the way. “Lay down a covering fire!”

  It was only a matter of heartbeats before the men of his battalion began doing just that. Kneeling behind some brush, standing behind trees, crouching behind some low rocks, or sprawled on their bellies—the cavalrymen poured a devastating fire into those warriors streaming toward the creek bank to defend their village. With the fury of their fire, it took no more than the space of four minutes for the Nez Perce to be driven back from the water—back, back toward their lodges.

  Behind those few warriors, women and old ones were herding the children over a low hill to the east, scattering out of range from those bullets landing among the buffalohide lodges like a spring hailstorm. Every now and again a pony would cry out in pain as a wayward bullet found one of the huge targets.

  “Shoot that one getting away!”

  Whipple turned, finding Dutch Holmes pointing upstream at a figure wrapped in the hide of a wolf slipping out of the bushes. Several of the civilians instantly trained their weapons on the Indian and fired, forcing the figure to whirl about and retreat into the brush.

  As Whipple lunged up on foot, Dave Ousterholt growled at his companions, “Was that a buck or a squaw?”

  “Don’t fire on the women! That’s an order of the U. S. Army!” the captain snarled his answer to the question.

  “Them bitches can kill you just as quick as a buck, Captain!” D. B. Randall bellowed in defense of his volunteers. “As for my outfit, we’ll shoot anything that moves over there.”

  “Captain Whipple!”

  He turned to find Henry E. Winters racing up, still in the saddle. “We need to get into the village now!”

  “Agreed, Captain! Deploy your E Troop on a skirmishers’ front, right flank. My men will take the left flank—”

  Randall interrupted, “What about my volunteers?”

  For an instant he considered telling Randall exactly what he could do with his liquored-up, unruly bar brawlers … but he reluctantly said, “Spread out behind us and act as reserves.” Then Whipple turned quickly so that he wouldn’t have to take any more guff from these damnable trouble-making civilians.

  Scanning over his L Company, Whipple located First Lieutenant Edwin H. Shelton shaping up the line for their charge. “Mr. Shelton! I want you to pick ten of our men. Get Lieutenant Forse from E Troop to divide off ten of his. Your squad will go after the horse herd. Above everything else, you must surround that herd, prevent it from running off, and capture it.”

  Shelton snapped a salute. “Capital idea, sir!”

  “There must be no failure in your task,” Whipple emphasized. “You must get your hands on that herd!”

  Wheeling about, Shelton hollered for Lieutenant Albert G. Forse.

  It took a few minutes to get the men up and out from behind what cover they had taken, a distressing development to Whipple’s way of thinking, since his men weren’t suffering any real resistance from the opposite bank at all. Nearly every one of the warriors had taken shelter among the lodges now, making only potshots at best. No concerted defense, nothing of any real danger posed to Whipple’s battalion.

  The captain was just starting his men off the west bank of the stream—

  “I hit the bitch! Whooo-damn! I know I hit her!”

  Right by Whipple’s elbow, Dave Ousterholt was shouting with unbridled glee, dancing about and pointing as Holmes and Randall pounded him on the back with their congratulations. Just downstream a woman had pitched off her pony, loosing her grip on her infant as she tumbled into the swift water. At the same moment, the frightened horse wheeled around on the uneven, stony stream bottom, the woman and child imprisoned between its flailing legs and slashing hooves. As the pony stumbled, then regained its balance, the woman’s head popped to the surface of the swift-flowing stream.

  She screamed, slapping the water with her arms, attempting to fight the current, struggling to reach the spot where her child had disappeared beneath the surface. As the pony lurched and lunged across the creek bottom, the woman was tossed about, hurtled downstream away from Whipple’s attackers, her faint screams interrupted each time she was bowled over and submerged by the roiling current.

  Dutch Holmes cheered his friend, “That’s one scalp you can’t get your hands on, Dave!”

  “Shit!” Ousterholt replied with a wolfish grin. “I brung down two for one bullet! Not bad hunting, I’ll wager!”

  Whipple finally tore his eyes off the struggling woman as her body was swept around a gentle bend in the creek, carried out of view. He swallowed hard as he whirled around on his heel and roared, “You volunteers—get in and secure the village!”

  ALMOST as soon as the mean-talker’s bullet struck one of the older little chiefs, a man named Shot Leg—who had just returned from the buffalo country only two days before—the soldiers were retreating and Bird Alighting was sucking in another breath. Now all those uniformed suapies were diving for cover, where they started to lay down a deadly fire among the eleven poor lodges and those few willow shelters for the young, unmarried warriors.

  With a grunt, Shot Leg crumpled to the ground nearby, both hands clamped around his bloody wound. He stared up at Bird Alighting in disbelief. “Can you understand this?” he asked, dazed. “My name is Tahkoopen, from a wounding many summers ago—and now I am shot in the same leg again!”

  Bird Alighting was just about to cut off a strip of his breechclout when his ears brought him the hammer of hoof-beats. Wheeling about, he saw the two warriors riding up in a blur. Leaping out of the way just in time, he watched as the pair leaned off their mounts and seized hold of the wounded Shot Leg, dragging the warrior away in a blur of color. With him hoisted between them, the horsemen dragged the man toward the eastern hills, where he would be out of danger.

  Spinning around, Bird Alighting found himself alone and looking for a pony, any horse that might get him out of the village. Across the creek, the Shadow voices grew louder and more strident. He glanced their way again. They were moving out of cover, advancing on the bank—preparing to cross. Around him the bullets slapped the thick buffalo hides now, chipped splinters off the lodgepoles. Whined like angry wasps as the air grew deadly around him and the frightened, wandering cattle bawled helplessly, stirring dust as if in a buffalo surround. The odor of fresh manure and urine from the ponies and beeves stung his nostrils—

  There—he saw a pony!

  It was struggling against its long halter rope, lashed to a stake at the side of a lodge. Forgotten and forsaken by its owner already run into the hills.

  Imene kaizi yeu yeu, Hunyewat! he mouthed his thankful praise to the Creator as he burst into a sprint, racing for the pony bucking and rearing near the middle of the small camp.

  Seizing hold of the long halter, Bird Alighting was nearly yanked off his feet by the powerful animal before he looped the rope around one wrist and freed the knot with his other hand. Wild-eyed with terror, the pony watched as the man lunged past its neck and leaped onto the narrow back.

  Drawing up the excess rope, Bird Alighting suddenly realized something was wrong. The horse stood perfectly still, as if turned into stone.

  “Amtiz! Ueye!” he shouted into the horse’s ear, slapping its front and rear flank with that coil of rope. “Let’s go! Run!”

  It was as if the ground exploded beneath him when the pony started bucking. Interlacing his fingers within its mane, locking his toes beneath its belly, gripping that rope with all his strength, Bird Alighting bounced into the air, landing on the horse’s bare back with a brutal thud each time the a
nimal struck the ground.

  As the pony whipped itself into a whirling dance, Bird Alighting spotted the suapies and the other Shadows reaching the middle of the stream, their horses threading through the strong current, all but having reached the near bank.

  His horse landed again with a teeth-jarring thud, then trembled and stood still once more—

  A burning ribbon of fire licked through his thigh.

  Bird Alighting jerked from the pain, his eyes finding the soldiers on the near bank and beginning to urge their dripping horses in among the lodges. The muzzles of their weapons were smoking. And he knew he had been hit by one of their bullets.

  “Mimillu!” he screeched at the horse, knowing this was his only chance to flee. “You stupid creature!”

  In his gut, Bird Alighting realized he would never stand a chance on foot, not with that wounded leg burning. He’d never manage to put any weight on that side of his body in a run to escape.

  Whipping the pony with the coil of rope on one side, flailing his one good foot against the other side, the warrior finally got the horse started away through the lodges. But slowly. The animal took a few tentative steps, paused and whipped its head around, then set off again at a little faster pace.

  Not far ahead Bird Alighting saw another man running in the same direction, for the base of the hill where the women and children had disappeared. One bullet, then a handful more, snarled past him and the horse as the warrior on foot peered over his shoulder and spotted Bird Alighting coming.

  With those oncoming suapies and the Shadows, Bird Alighting realized death would not be long in finding the man left to flee on foot. He would be run down—shot from behind or clubbed with a rifle before he was finished off at close range.

  “Come up behind me!” he shouted to the warrior as he drew near.

  Without a word, the breathless warrior lurched to a halt and held up his hand. Grabbing it in his, Bird Alighting swung the man up behind him on the slow horse.

  That exertion suddenly seemed to fill the morning sky with shooting stars. He found it hard to focus, could not see much of anything at all around him as he began to wobble on the back of the pony,

  “Hold on! Hold on!” the warrior behind him yelled in his ear.

  But Bird Alighting was having trouble staying upright. He wanted to tell the man about his leg wound, that he must be losing too much blood, that his head was not working right anymore and he could not see….

  Then all color, all light, went out of his body—

  RACING out of the north and east sides of the village, more than a hundred of the Nez Perce were streaming away from Captain Whipple’s troops and D. B. Randall’s Mount Idaho volunteers.

  They reminded Lieutenant Sevier M. Rains of rats streaming from the tall piles of grain sacks rising from the wharves in Lewiston. Why, if Whipple ordered these eighty-some men after the Indians, it would be like trying to contain mercury under their fingers. A worse than useless proposition. Little more than a fool’s errand.

  “Mr. Rains!”

  He wheeled his horse at Whipple’s call, found the officer approaching on horseback. “Captain?”

  “You’re to be commended, Lieutenant,” Whipple began, a bit breathless.

  “Commended, Captain?”

  “Racing ahead of the skirmish line the way you did—alone.”

  “Truth is, sir … was hoping to catch Looking Glass myself. I figured he was the biggest prize of all. But I think he got away with the rest.”

  “Next to that chief, their horses are the next biggest prize we could hope to corral,” Whipple advised. “With two of my lieutenants gone after the herd, I need you to take charge of the destruction of the camp.”

  “Burn the lodges, sir?”

  “Yes. See how the volunteers are already going through every one—looting all that is worth a pittance.”

  “Firearms, powder, that sort of thing, Captain?”

  “Save it from the fires, but torch the rest.”

  Rains touched his fingertips to his brow in salute. “Very good, Captain!”

  As it turned out, the lieutenant’s detail could get no more than two of the lodges burning. The hides were either too damp with the morning dew to burn or simply too thick to do more than smolder. For the better part of an hour it was like a celebration for Randall’s civilians as they whooped and hollered each time one of them dragged something of value from the captured lodges. Small buckskin pouches of black powder, satchels of vermillion paint, and finely tanned buffalo robes, not to mention cooking utensils, blankets, china dishes, and some clayware. Anything that could not be set ablaze was stomped on or busted with the butts of their rifles, broken in pieces so small no one would waste time retrieving them from the damp ground.

  “Hey, Lieutenant!” D. B. Randall called out to Rains as the officer came to a halt by a lodge standing at the edge of camp. “You see how my friend Minturn proved himself the best shot of this whole bunch, didn’cha?”

  “Can’t say as I had an eye on any of your men in particular, Mr. Randall.”

  “Shit, Lieutenant!” Randall exclaimed, waving over one of his fellow civilians. “Here, this is Peter Minturn—best shot in this here territory, I’ll wager.”

  Rains glanced quickly at the young volunteer’s face, saw the bemused pride in Minturn’s eyes. He asked the volunteer, “So you accounted for some enemy dead, did you?”

  Instead of Minturn answering for himself, Randall snorted, “Hell, Lieutenant—this here friend of mine was hungry for Injun meat, I’ll tell you. The man damn well proved himself to be a dead shot each time he pulled the trigger!”

  “H-hungry for Indian meat?” Rains repeated, bewildered by the crude expression.

  Minturn finally spoke: “Just like I’m off hunting to make meat for the stew pot, Lieutenant. This here jump on Looking Glass’s village was no different than shooting into a bunch of scampering jackrabbits!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  KHOY-TSAHL, 1877

  SLOWLY, GROGGILY, BIRD ALIGHTING CAME ALIVE AGAIN.

  He looked around. Felt the arms locked about him. Stared down at those two hands wrapped in the horse’s mane and wondered whose they were.

  Then all color and light returned to his mind—and he remembered the warrior he had stopped to pick up in his flight from the village.

  Sensing the labored, uneven lope of the overburdened horse, Bird Alighting gazed down at his legging, finding half of it entirely soaked with his blood. Even though he was still light-headed, the warrior realized he had suffered a severe loss of blood and hadn’t fallen for only one reason—the man behind him.

  “See our friend?” the warrior behind him yelled in his ear. “She’s coming out to us!”

  Bewildered, Bird Alighting looked in the direction of the approaching hoofbeats—his eyes finding Etemiere coming off the hillside at a gallop. This woman, called Arrowhead among his Nee-Me-Poo, was racing toward them at a slant out of the skimpy timber. She had a large gray-black wolfskin tied around her neck, its head positioned atop hers, held in place by a cord knotted under her chin. With the speed of her pony, that drape fluttered behind her as she slowed to a lope, coming alongside them and matching the pace of their pony.

  “I tried to find a place in the brush at the creek’s edge where I could make some shots at the suapies” she said breathlessly. “Make some kills across the water—” but Arrowhead suddenly interrupted her words when her eyes saw Bird Alighting’s wound. “You are bleeding—badly! Stop—stop your horse now!”

  The warrior behind him pulled with one hand in the pony’s mane, the other tugging on that long coil of rope Bird Alighting still gripped in one palm, convincing the frightened pony to stop. Immediately vaulting from her horse, Arrowhead leaned over, pulling up the bottom of her cloth dress with one hand as she yanked a knife from its belt scabbard with her other and quickly hacked off two long strips of the wool cloth.

  Standing at Bird Alighting’s knee, Arrowhead quickly folded one
piece over the seeping wound, then flung the other, wider strip around the leg itself. She pulled her makeshift bandage as tight as she could before looping the ends into a knot, then secured it with a second knot. “Perhaps this will stop the bleeding now.”

  “Yes,” the warrior behind him agreed quietly. “Then his mind won’t go to sleep again from losing any more blood. But we will need to get him some raw liver to eat soon.”

  All Bird Alighting could do was nod. Eating raw liver was the best thing for the weakness caused from a great loss of blood.

  “I saw a young herder boy killed,” Arrowhead told them as she inspected the bandage she had just tied around the leg. “He was trying to drive off the horses when the Shadows came charging up to steal the herd from us.”

  “You saw him fall?”

  “Yes. He pitched off the back of his pony and did not move,” she explained. “I wanted to go see to him, if there was any breath left in his mouth—but the herding ground was too crowded with soldiers by that time. They were shooting at me, so I hurried to the hills to catch up with the rest of our village.”

  “What will we do now?” the warrior asked as Arrowhead turned away to leap atop her pony.

  She said, “We should find the rest of our people.”

  A crackle of sporadic gunfire sounded dangerously close as they gave heels to their ponies and started toward the top of the hill.

  With desperation in his voice, the warrior declared, “No, I mean to ask: What will Looking Glass’s people do now that we have lost all our horses, left our lodges and homes and gardens behind … abandoned everything we own?”

  “What law of warfare says an enemy has the right to shoot you when you are surrendering?” Bird Alighting asked, surprising them both that he was talking after so long a silence.

  “It is evil treachery,” the warrior growled. “To shoot at innocents.”

  “There is only one thing we can do,” Bird Alighting added, the colors in his mind more crisp and certain than they ever had been. “Blood will always follow blood.”