Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  “We know it,” Charles Blewett affirmed. “Been on this prairie a few years. So we know the ground, and we know the Injuns, too. Never would’ve figgered Looking Glass’s people for turning bad on us the way they did up on Clear Creek.”

  “I want you volunteers to find out what’s become of those Indians,” Whipple said. “They’ve had plenty of time to make it onto the prairie since yesterday morning. With Colonel Perry’s supply train due along here from Fort Lapwai any day now, I don’t want any war parties slipping up and surprising us.”

  “Better to know what the bastards are up to and where they’re going,” Blewett agreed.

  Foster asked, “You gonna send some soldiers along with us, Captain?”

  “No, more men would just make you a bigger target, easier to spot. With just the two of you, I figure any roving war parties won’t spot you so easy.” Then, in afterthought, Whipple added, “I don’t figure you’ll be all that far from this road station that you can’t make a fast dash back here if you confront any ticklish situation.”

  “Awright, Captain,” Foster replied. “We’ll get us some rations and ride out.”

  Whipple nodded. “Can you make it over to the country by Craig’s Landing, see if the hostiles are on the river, and get back by supper to make your report?”

  “Back before dark,” Blewett assured.

  Whipple had established his camp a day ago among the deserted, ransacked buildings then known as the Norton ranch. The captain had brought his battalion here early yesterday, 2 July, after returning to Mount Idaho at midnight on the first, the day his command had destroyed Looking Glass’s village. Captain Lawrence S. Babbitt, a member of General O. O. Howard’s staff, was waiting for them there with written orders for Whipple to establish this presence at the Cottonwood road station. There he was to await Perry and his supply train, as well as intercepting, if possible, the Nez Perce if they should happen along his way after recrossing the Salmon.

  “The general commanding orders that if Perry does not arrive with his supply train in a timely manner,” Whipple had told his handful of battalion officers before they put Mount Idaho behind them yesterday, “I am to leave no stone unturned to ascertain where the Indians are heading. We are to report to the general by courier as often as we can.” Then, the captain read another sentence from the note brought by Babbitt: “ ‘I expect of the cavalry tremendous vigor and activity even if it should kill a few horses.’ ”

  Have no doubt about it: Howard wanted Joseph caught, corralled, and defeated.

  When they had put Mount Idaho behind them yesterday, Lieutenant Rains wasn’t sure how any of them should feel about that. This small battalion augmented by a few undisciplined civilians wasn’t meant to confront and give battle to the hostile Nez Perce who had demolished Perry’s command at the White Bird. Laying into Looking Glass’s small village was one thing, but ordered to stand in the middle of this open prairie and bar the way of that band of heathen cutthroats, murderers, and rapists was altogether different. If Howard figured the hostiles were coming this way, then why the hell wasn’t he here with reinforcements?

  So Rains wholeheartedly agreed with the tactical decision Captain Whipple made regarding gathering intelligence on the wandering, dispossessed people of Looking Glass. Better to know what your enemy was doing than for anything to hit you as a total surprise. In the meantime, Colonel Perry would be coming down from Lapwai with supplies and ammunition, and maybe the advance of Howard’s cavalry would make it in, too. In another day or so there would be enough soldiers here to put an end to the great Nez Perce war with a dying whimper.

  Norton’s road ranch was the only structural complex of any consequence on the whole of the Camas Prairie. Originally laid out in a wide brush- and tree-lined gulch along the south side of Cottonwood Creek some twenty miles west of its junction with the Clearwater, the house, barns, stables, and corrals overlapped the Mount Idaho-Lewiston Road. The house itself, where Jennie Norton had run her hotel business, sat on the south side of the creek.

  Fifteen years before, a settler named Allen had built the original way station, consisting of a store, a saloon, a few hotel rooms, and a stage stop. The next year it sold to a pair of enterprising men, but within a year they had sold it to another man. John Byrom operated the place until Joseph Moore and Peter H. Ready of Mount Idaho bought the station. When they sold it to Benjamin and Jennie Norton, Moore stayed on to work for the new owners and Ready started hauling freight up and down the road to Lewiston,* which ran northwest from the ranch through a rolling countryside broken by some deep ravines carved by the tiny streams and rivulets feeding Cottonwood Creek.

  Hearing stories told at Mount Idaho about the war party’s raid conducted against the civilians and Ben Norton’s death back on 14 June, when the Nez Perce outbreak was just getting under way, Rains was completely surprised to discover that the hostiles hadn’t put a torch to any of the buildings. Upon the battalion’s arrival here at this peaceful place, the lieutenant had taken a deep breath of air and looked about, finding it hard to believe there was an Indian war breaking out—and that it had started here.

  “You two going to search from along the hillside?” he asked as he came to a stop near the two civilians and their horses. Foster was rising to the saddle.

  Blewett swept his arm across the slope of nearby Craig’s Mountain. “It makes sense to. There’s plenty of timber for cover while we have us a look over the other side to see them Injuns come over the Craig Billy Crossing.”

  Foster reined his horse in a half-circle and tapped it with his heels as both civilians started away. He said, “Yonder side of that ridge, Lieutenant … that be where we figger we’ll find us some Injuns.”

  “JESUS God!” William Foster hissed under his breath as he yanked back on the horse’s reins, his heart suddenly a lump in his throat.

  Beside him, Charles Blewett spotted the large herd of horses at the same moment. Together their animals dug in their hooves and slid to a stop on the bare slope.

  That herd of Indian ponies had suddenly appeared around the brow of a nearby hill barren of timber, north of the Cottonwood near the road to Fort Lapwai and Lewiston.

  “That ain’t no loose stock,” Blewett said as they both quickly glanced this way and that for possible cover.

  “They’ll have herders with ’em,” Foster grumbled the moment before he spotted the riders arrayed on the flanks of the large herd.

  At this distance, he could tell those outriders wore feathers and carried weapons. No youngsters these. A war party for damned sure.

  Foster started to wheel his pony around, saying, “Let’s get afore they—”

  But he was interrupted by the first pop of a far-off rifle.

  As the sun had come out and their damp clothing began to steam that morning following days of hard, intermittent rain, the two civilians had traveled northwest on the Lewiston stage road to the point where it crossed Boardhouse Creek, then angled off to the left on the Salmon River Trail in the direction of Lawyer’s Canyon. It had been a trail that took them over a long, rolling ridge before it descended into a little open saddle, then climbed once more up the shallow slope at the southwest side of Craig’s Mountain.

  That’s where the broad, open terrain butted up against some light timber on this east side of the mountain rising more than a thousand feet above the Cottonwood. They were two ridges away from the soldier camp when they spotted the herd … and those warriors.

  Jerking his head around to look over his shoulder at the distant gunshot, Foster saw the puff of smoke drifting on the cool wind, finding more than a handful of the warriors already galloping full-tilt in their direction.

  “You don’t need to ask me to get more’n once!” Blewett screamed as he flailed the side of his horse with the long reins.

  Foster pointed as his horse shot him past Blewett’s. “We make that brush, maybe we can lose ’em!”

  The pair of civilians had covered no more than a hundred yards w
hen Foster heard his friend call out with the sort of cry that instantly brought a chill to a man’s spine.

  “Bill!”

  It took a moment for Foster to yank back on the reins and get his hell-bent-for-leather horse to slow to a halt. By the time he could turn the animal around in place, he watched Blewett finish his brief flight through the air, hitting the ground, hard, on his hip—his horse rearing back on its hind legs and pawing the air before it came down on all fours and tore off, riderless.

  “Goddammit, Bill!”

  “I’ll go catch that damned horse for you!”

  Before he got very far, Foster heard the first snarl of a bullet passing by his head, watching first one, then another, of the Indian guns spew gunsmoke in the distance as the half-dozen warriors approached at a gallop. That’s when he realized he wasn’t going to reach Blewett’s horse in time to pick him up and ride on out of there with his friend. The horse was tearing off hell-for-leather toward Lawyer’s Canyon, too damned close to those warriors.

  “Get hid!” Foster screamed loud as he could while he sawed back the reins, shoving down on the stirrups, wrenching his horse around in mid-stride. “I’m goin’ for help.”

  “No!” Blewett pleaded in dismay from the distance, hands up and imploring. “Come back an’ get me yourself! We kin ride double—”

  “I’ll bring some soldiers!” Foster promised. “Get hid in the brush, Charlie! Get hid!”

  Then he was pummelling the horse’s ribs again, no longer able to look at that frightened, pasty blur of Blewett’s face. The dismay, the terror, written there as he had to hear the pounding hooves straining ever closer.

  William Foster had just made his best friend a promise. And a man never broke a promise to a friend.

  He’d get some of the captain’s soldiers and they’d hurry back to drive off the small war party. It wouldn’t take long for him to reach Cottonwood Station from here, Foster told himself as another bullet whined past his ear. It wouldn’t take him long to bring back some help.

  After all, William Foster never broke his promise.

  *Cries from the Earth, vol. 14, the Plainsmen series.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KHOY-TSAHL, 1877

  “SEE HOW THE TWO OF THEM RUN!” SHORE CROSSING roared to his cousin as the two riders in the distance wheeled and bolted away.

  Red Moccasin Tops, the one called Sarpsis Ilppilp by their people, laughed. “I haven’t seen men run so afraid since we chased the suapies and their Shadow friends from the valley of Lahmotta!”

  Already Rainbow and Five Wounds, another pair of inseparable warrior friends, were yelping, too, waving their rifles as their ponies shot away from the herd they were guiding back to their camp on the upper Cottonwood. It was a bright and beautiful morning after many days of intermittent rain and wind. Nothing more than a light breeze had blown in their faces as they started some captured Shadow horses back for the village. The sun felt good on the bare skin stretched across Shore Crossing’s tawny, sinewy limbs.

  “Come ride after the Shadows with us, Swan Necklace!” Shore Crossing cried to his younger nephew.

  “Eeh!” the one called Wetyetmas Wahyakt cried back in youthful glee. He wasn’t nearly as old as his two companions, no more than twenty summers old now. “We haven’t shot our guns at any Shadows since we fired them at Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers when he started to cross the river Tahmonah!”

  In a broad line the warriors were streaming away from the herd now, right behind Rainbow and Five Wounds, the two daring warriors who had rejoined the bands the very day of the fight that had brought a resounding defeat for the soldiers. Two Moons, called Lepeet Hessemdooks, rode on the far right flank. And the strong and powerful Otskai, known as Going Out, brought up the left.

  Shore Crossing, this young man called Wahlitits, had been the catalyst of this war. What had started out as his hunger to prove himself a man before a pretty young woman in those days of Hillal at their traditional gathering ground of Tepahlewam, had soon blown itself into a general uprising. So much the better! For now all the People had fallen in behind Shore Crossing’s daring act to finally avenge the wrongful death of his father many winters ago.

  Eagle Robe, known as Tipyalhlanah Siskon, had consented to loan a conniving Shadow named Larry Ott some of his land to graze a few cattle and horses while the Nee-Me-Poo rode east into the buffalo country. But when White Bird’s band returned and Eagle Robe went to ask the Shadow to leave his land near the mouth of Deer Creek, Ott had pulled his gun and shot Shore Crossing’s father.

  When Eagle Robe did not return for the longest time, Wahlitits went looking for him, only to find his father dying against Larry Ott’s fence.

  “Please,” Eagle Robe begged. “Promise me … promise me you will not take vengeance—”

  “I cannot!” his son had shrieked.

  For the longest time Eagle Robe had tried to speak, but no sound came from his tongue; none crossed his bloodied lips. He was about to die … and Shore Crossing knew he could not let his father die without hearing the words he so wanted to hear his son speak.

  Eventually, Shore Crossing spoke softly, very reluctantly, and most sadly.

  “I promise you, Father.”

  Eagle Robe had closed his eyes at last. Wahlitits heard that last breath gush up in a ball from his father’s punctured lungs as his head gently sagged to the side.

  Anguished, Shore Crossing had sobbed, pressing his head against his father’s bloody breast, “I promise … promise not to kill this man who has killed you!”

  But … that had been back when he considered himself a boy.

  In the last three winters since his father’s murder, Wahlitits had grown to manhood and taken a wife. Just this last spring she had announced she was carrying their first child.

  “Maybe you want another woman because your first wife is growing bigger, eh?” Red Moccasin Tops had asked him that first day of their search for Larry Ott. Shore Crossing had been making soft eyes at a young woman in Joseph’s band.

  Bringing Swan Necklace along as their horse holder, the trio hadn’t found the murderer, so they went in search of another man who had mistreated the Nee-Me-Poo before, even setting his dogs on them. After Richard Divine was killed, they remembered Jurden Elfers had many fine horses and were sure that he had some guns, too. They shot the horse breeder and three* more men before starting back for Tepahlewam to the village—where the whole camp came alive with war fever. Sun Necklace,** the father of Red Moccasin Tops, led out the first band of warriors who were hot to spill some more blood of the Salmon River settlers who had done them so much wrong for many seasons.

  Now they had defeated the suapies in the canyon of Lahmotta, then led Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers on a merry chase through the Salmon River breaks while the village had recrossed to camp at Aipadass, a sagebrush flat just north of Craig Billy Crossing, where the village had rested for a day before starting across the Camas Prairie for the Clearwater this morning.

  Whooping and shrieking in glee this warm summer day, the exuberant warriors sped after the two fleeing Shadows. Like those raids of burning, raping, and murder, this chase, too, was nothing less than great fun. Too bad there were only two of the Boston men—a term the Nee-Me-Poo had long, long used to indicate the pale-skinned traders who had come among them bringing goods from afar, carried on ships that plied the far oceans.

  Wahlitits and Sarpsis Ilppilp had grown up together, more like brothers than cousins. Much more than cousins, they were best friends in everything. Red Moccasin Tops was an excitable young man, part Cayuse in blood, in fact a grandson of Tomahas, one of the murderers of missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman many years before.

  “He’s mine!” Rainbow shouted the moment the Shadow was pitched off his rearing horse less than two hundred yards away.

  “No!” protested Five Wounds, Rainbow’s best friend since childhood. “It was my shot made him fall!”

  “You two argue all you want over the one who is
put on foot!” Strong Eagle bellowed. This capable warrior called Tipyahlahnah Kapskaps, like Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops, had tied a red blanket at his neck as they rode into battle against the suapies at the White Bird. From that morning the three were known as the “Red Coats.”

  Strong Eagle brought his rifle to his shoulder, preparing to fire. “I want the other Shadow who thinks he is getting away!”

  “You will not be so lucky today, Strong Eagle!” screamed Shore Crossing. “That foolish Shadow is mine!”

  The other Red Coat snorted with a wide grin, “Only if that poor horse of yours is faster than mine!”

  “Farewell, Wahlitits!” cried Red Moccasin Tops as he pulled his pony aside for the Shadow put afoot. “I am going after the one hiding in the brush like a scared rabbit!”

  “There is no sport in that!” Shore Crossing chided his cousin. “No bravery running down some poor, frightened ground squirrel who has soiled himself in fear of us!”

  They laughed as they parted company, some of them streaming right after the Shadow scampering into the timber and brush on foot, while the others galloped after the fleeing rider. Wahlitits, Strong Eagle, Five Wounds, and Rainbow were closing the gap on the big horse that had grown weary of the long run. Shadow horses may look pretty, but they simply did not have the mighty lungs the Nee-Me-Poo bred into their ponies. And that dramatic difference was showing as they dashed up this long, gradual slope, tearing through the green grass growing tall here in midsummer radiance. The Shadow disappeared momentarily over the top of the grassy knoll.

  “Now we will catch him!” Shore Crossing shouted as he brought the long rawhide strands of his quirt down against his pony’s rear flanks. “It will be a race between him and me to the Cottonwood!”

  The last word was barely off his tongue when the four of them reached the top of that bare hill and started down the long slope after the Shadow—gazing far beyond the single rider to that gulch where stood all the buildings of the white family … suddenly finding more suapies encamped there than Shore Crossing could count. Tiny, dark figures only—but, there must be at least ten-times-ten of them!