FOR the last two days George Shearer had put up with these goddamned Yankee soldiers hunkering down at Cotton-wood Station, refusing to lay into the red bastards. But being forced to sit here and Watch while his friends were jumped as they were riding to Norton’s ranch was simply more than the Southern fighting man could take.
Besides the hundred-and-twenty-some soldiers Captain David Perry commanded, there was a bevy of civilian packers and a handful of volunteers who had shown up to add their weapons to the fight by the time those two couriers had raced into Norton’s ranch earlier that morning. In something less than thirty hours, the men Captain Whipple had dispatched made it over to Howard’s command across the Salmon River and back again.
To Shearer’s way of thinking, there was more than enough men to take on those warriors in a stand-up, head-to-head fight. The odds were all but even!
So why hadn’t Perry sent out some men to rescue the civilians when he had ordered Captain Winters’s detachment to rescue those two couriers?
The first answer Perry gave the astonished volunteer was, “I’m not all that sure those are civilians. The warriors could be clever enough to wear some clothing taken from a settler’s farm—arranging a ruse or decoy to lure some of my men to their deaths.”
But when the shooting got closer and the civilians hunkered down on that slight rise with more than a hundred-fifty horsemen swirling around them, it was all the proof anyone needed that those weren’t warriors dressed up like white men!
Yet did that blue-belly Perry send help out then? Hell no!
To Shearer the only excuse could be that those men weren’t soldiers.
On top of everything else, George knew Perry had to be dwelling on that trouncing he had suffered at White Bird Canyon three weeks ago, able to think of little else!
That wasn’t to say all the officers were duplicitous cowards to Shearer’s way of thinking. Why, Lieutenant Edwin H. Shelton had even stepped right up to Perry and volunteered to lead a detail that he would take across that narrow strip of ground left open by the hostiles. But the commander was having nothing of it.
“It’s too late to do any good,” Perry equivocated by the time he got around to giving Shelton an answer. “They cannot last much longer—those men should have known better than to travel that road, as dangerous as it is.”
“We owe it to them to try, Colonel,” Shelton begged.
“If I did send any relief,” Perry refused, “it might well sacrifice our position here.”
“Here?” Shearer echoed, a heavy dose of sarcasm mixing with his Southern accent.
Perry wheeled on the civilian near his elbow. “We have a great store of arms and ammunition here. I fear that the moment I would start a detail to help the civilians on that hill, the enemy would rush in here and overrun what men I would leave behind. And all those weapons would fall into the hands of the Nez Perce. Supplies meant for General Howard’s column—”
“Bullshit, Colonel,” Shearer drawled. “It’s a goddamned shame and an outrage to allow those men—those brave men—to remain out there and perish without you making an effort to save them!”
Perry was clearly growing red, about ready to burst, when one of his officers stepped in front of Shearer to plead their case.
“Let me ask for volunteers, Colonel,” Henry Winters begged, having finally worked up the nerve to question the battalion commander. “I won’t take so many men that you’ll be in danger of being overwhelmed. Give me the chance to show that can force the Indians to break off their attack simply by us starting out of here—”
“No, Captain,” Perry snapped, clearly irritated with this proposal by a fellow of the same rank.
To George’s way of thinking, Perry was already frustrated and angry by all those pulling and prodding him to put together a rescue.
“It’s simply too late,” Perry continued.
In exasperation, Shearer was turning away from the group as some of the bystanders grumbled. One of the men in the ranks grabbed the civilian’s arm and spoke up, none too quietly.
“Shearer,” growled Sergeant Bernard Simpson a little too loudly to be under his breath, “you civilians damn well don’t need to come to the First Cavalry for any assistance—since you won’t be getting any!”
“Who said that?” Perry demanded.
Not one of those officers and enlisted who stood nearby dared admit a thing or betray their compatriot from L Company.
When no one answered, Perry snapped, “I’ll court-martial the next man who questions my authority or my decisions!”
“I’m volunteering to take any of your soldiers with me,” Shearer spoke as he stepped up. “After all, they’re my friends. Those civilians are our own home guards—”
“Request denied,” Perry shot back. “I’m not letting go of a man to a lost cause.”
“Goddamn it, you puffed up blue-belly martinet!” Shearer roared, wagging a finger in Perry’s face for a moment, then flinging his arm out in the direction of the skirmish. “You hear that gunfire? See that gunsmoke? That fight ain’t over!”
“I’ll ride with you,” Sergeant Simpson volunteered, stepping forward now. This soldier from L Company, First U. S. Cavalry, turned to Perry. “With all due respect, Colonel—I was the one who made the comment ’bout the civilians not getting any help from the First Cavalry.”
Perry’s eyes narrowed menacingly, “Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir, I own up to it.”
Perry fumed a moment as if searching for what to say, then turned to Whipple. “Captain, place this man under arrest for insubordination!”
“Colonel?” Simpson grumbled. “Let us go and fight. I joined the army to fight our enemies … not each other!”
“Colonel Perry,” Stephen Whipple pleaded as he pushed Simpson aside, “I wish you would reconsider about the sergeant.”
“The man will stay under arrest,” Perry shot back. “Nor will I have you questioning my authority either!”
“Not about the sergeant, sir,” Whipple said, stepping up to stand directly in front of Perry. “I’m asking you to reconsider sending a relief party while there’s still men to save.”
Shearer watched as Perry chewed on his lower lip for a long, breathless moment. Then it all came at a gush.
“Very well. Captain Winters!”
“Sir?”
“You’ll accompany Captain Whipple and his gun crew—prepare a relief party.” Whipple saluted. “How many men, sir?”
“Two companies,” Perry ordered.
“I request to go along” Lieutenant Shelton offered.
Winters waved him on as both captains turned away from Perry. Shearer was lunging right in front of Whipple after a few steps, causing the officer to draw up short.
“I’m going, too,” George volunteered. “I’ll bring some friends with me.”
“The more the merrier, as they say, Mr. Shearer,” Whipple growled as he brushed by the civilian. “The more the merrier.”
*One and one-half miles southeast of the present-day community of Cottonwood, Idaho, and one-third of a mile east of the memorial and sign located off U. S. 95.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JULY 5, 1877
WHEN GEORGE SHEARER TURNED AROUND TO FETCH HIS horse, he ran right into a friend, Paul Guiterman, who already had the reins to their animals in his hands.
“I figger they’re ’bout out of cartridges, George,” the stocky civilian declared. “And it’s gonna take some before these soldiers are saddled up to ride out.”
Shearer studied the look on his friend’s face a moment before saying, “Maybeso we ought’n give it a try on our own?”
“I was hoping you was thinking same as me,” Guiterman admitted. “I stuffed ever’ bullet I could in our saddlebags.“
Shearer grinned at the man as he grabbed his reins and stuffed a boot into the stirrup. “Sure you was a Yankee during the war, Paul?”
“I was Union down to my soles, you ol’ Reb.” Guiterman swung up.
“But I can still give one hell of a Rebel yell.”
As Shearer jabbed his heels into the horse’s ribs, he said, “Better unlimber your tongue—’cause them Injuns just opened up a nice li’l road for us to sashay right on through!”
LEW Wilmot wasn’t sure if his eyes or his ears were deceiving him. But—gloree! It looked as if two riders were sprinting their horses right through a narrow gap the warriors had left open between the soldiers’ camp at Cottonwood and the knoll where D. B. Randall’s “Brave Seventeen” were fighting for their lives.
“Lew! By God, here we come!”
Wilmot blinked, and blinked again, not sure what was happening when dim, distant figures emerged from Norton’s ranch and started wriggling their way. The way his eyes were swimming with moisture and the sting of sweat, the man wasn’t sure just what he saw. All through the fight, Lew couldn’t get the image of that pink, wrinkled, bawling baby boy of his out of his mind. Now as he dragged the back of a hand under his runny nose, Wilmot realized he just might see Louisa and the girls again. Just might get himself a chance to watch that boy rise up to manhood, too.
It was George Shearer hollering at him as the pair of riders approached—that slow-talking, hard-drinking Southern-born transplant who claimed he had served on the staff of no less than Robert E. Lee himself—and Paul Guiterman, both of them yanking back on their reins, horse hooves skidding, stirring dust into the golden air, sweat slinging off the animals and men alike as a few of Randall’s men came lumbering out of the grass the moment Shearer and Guiterman stuffed their hands into those saddlebags and started tossing out boxes of ammunition.
“.45–70?” a man asked.
“Here you go,” Shearer replied, tossing him a carton of twenty as the Nez Perce bullets sang around them.
“Any. 44?”
“I brung some,” Guiterman declared.
“Where’s ever’one else?” Shearer asked as he knelt beside Wilmot.
Lew was concentrating on holding the warriors back a good distance, where he knew the Indians weren’t all that sharp with their rifles, “You’re looking at us.”
“How many was comin’?”
“Seventeen.”
“Shit,” Shearer murmured. “Hope like hell we can hold ’em a li’l longer, Lew. Them blue-bellies sure do know how to dillydally when it suits ’em.”
“Dillydally?”
“We finally shamed that Colonel Perry into sending you some relief.”
Wilmot felt the smile grow from within. “You mean you ain’t the only relief that’s coming, George?”
“Lookee there now, you side-talking cuss you,” Shearer said, slapping Wilmot on the shoulder and pointing. “There come your soldiers now!”
“Wh-where you going?” Lew asked as George Shearer leaped to his feet and lunged toward his ground-hobbled horse.
“Them Yankee blues gonna be all day getting here,” Shearer grumbled as he flung himself up onto the horse’s back. “I’m fixin’ to go nudge ’em to come a li’l faster, is all. Gimme some cover fire whilst I ride outta here, will you, Lew?”
Wilmot levered and fired, levered and fired again, over and over, then flicked a glance at that narrow gauntlet Shearer was racing through for a second time.
Beyond the lone rider, the soldiers were throwing out an overly wide, skimpy line of skirmishers as they began their two-mile advance on that low knoll east of the road ranch. As the wide advance of fifteen foot soldiers emerged from the mouth of the ravine known as Cottonwood Canyon, Randall’s survivors could next spot about twice that many soldiers marching behind them in a much tighter formation. With his small looking glass Lew was able to see that they were accompanied by a Gatling gun. As this unit began to make its crossing behind the fifteen skirmishers, about twenty more soldiers, all mounted, shuffled into view and began to cut obliquely across the skirmishers’ path—
Of a sudden, the hiss of one last bullet from the Nez Perce quickly reminded Lew Wilmot that the enemy still had them all but encircled. But as he turtled his head into his shoulders and peered around at the naked horsemen, he found the warriors drawing back. While the skirmishers plodded on at an angle that would eventually put them in the Indians’ front some distance from the knoll, the larger unit of foot soldiers and those eighteen horse soldiers kept on for the besieged civilians.
In the mid-distance Wilmot could make out a few shouts and screams from the hostiles as they pranced about, shaking their bows and carbines at the soldiers. But the fighting was over.
“What you figger they’re telling us?” Henry Johnson asked.
Lew sighed. “Saying there’s gonna be another day, another fight, and a lot more killing before this war’s ever settled.”
“Lew!”
Wilmot whirled at the cry of his name. “George!” he cried, his throat sore and raspy from overuse. “By damn—you hurried them Yankee soldiers, you ol’ Reb you!”
Shading his eyes in the bright afternoon sun as he peered up at Shearer as the man came skidding to a halt again on the sweeping slope of their knoll, Lew suddenly realized just how many hours they had managed to hold off those one hundred fifty warriors. “Get down off that horse!” he yelled at Shearer, starting toward his friend, his thoughts thickened with hope—
He was surprised when he heard a rifleshot from close by, watched the bullet wing Shearer’s horse across the withers. The animal began to buck and dance as the civilian struggled to bring the mount under control. Blood seeped down its neck.
“George, by God—get down outta that saddle!”
Vaulting from the back of the wounded horse, Shearer lunged toward Wilmot as a squad of soldiers started loping for the Indian sniper’s position. The two friends shook and pounded backs; then Shearer stepped back as a few of the other survivors stomped up at the same moment the first of the cavalry were reaching the hilltop.
His eyes darting about, Shearer asked, “Where’s D. B.?”
Wilmot turned on his heel. Pointing, he exclaimed, “Randall was down there, last I saw of him. There! That’s his horse on the ground!”
The two were off in a sprint, down the slope to the grassy swale where Lew had watched D. B. Randall’s horse crumple to the ground early in the seige. As he raced closer and closer, Wilmot spotted the back of Randall’s head resting against the animal’s motionless front flank. D. B. was reclining back in the tangle of the horse’s legs as Wilmot leaped around the rear hooves and slid to a stop. His breath caught when he saw the dark, shiny smear that covered the whole of his friend’s chest, like he’d spilled an entire bowl of blackberry preserves on himself at breakfast that morning—
“D.B.!”
The eyes fluttered slightly, eventually opening halfway. “That you? That Lew Wilmot?”
He held his face down close. “It’s over, D. B. Gonna get you to some help now.” And laid his palm against the wet, sticky, black stain on that shirt.
“I’m mortal hurt, Lew”—then he coughed, wet and long. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere now. This gonna be where I die.” The eyes seemed to widen perceptibly as Lew moved over Randall, making some shade for the wounded man’s face. “Got any water?”
He quickly glanced up at Shearer. “George? You get a canteen for D. B.?”
When the water came, Randall drank a little, then coughed some more, bringing up gouts of blood, almost like he was heaving from a terrible stomach wound as well. When he finally caught his breath and had licked some blood from his bottom lip, D. B. Randall looked up at the two civilians.
His eyes fluttered as he asked, “Tell … tell my wife—”
Then the eyelids didn’t tremble anymore. They simply stopped moving. For a long time Wilmot and Shearer squatted there by their forty-four-year-old friend. Probably to be sure before Wilmot gently eased the eyelids back down and rose to his feet, watching the approach of an empty lumber wagon rattling toward the bottom of the slope.
James Cearly came up. “D. B.?”
Lew nodded. “He’s dead.�
�
“Ben, too.”
“Where?” Shearer asked.
Cearly pointed. “No more’n three other boys wounded.”*
“That’s all?” George Shearer asked, his voice rising a pitch in amazement.
Wilmot looked around them, counting five dead horses, their big carcasses scattered from the long depression to the top of the low rise where he had started their stand.
“We held ’em off, by Jupiter!” Cash Day exclaimed. “Can’t believe it’s over.”
“It ain’t over for none of us,” Lew declared sourly. “This is far from over—”
“You civilians get your dead and wounded loaded up in that wagon!” announced one of the mounted soldiers Wilmot recognized as the officer called Winters. “I’m moving my forces back to Camp Rains.”
“Camp Rains?” Lew repeated, looking at Shearer.
The civilian nodded. “They named their bivouac at Norton’s place after the dead officer what led his scouting party into an ambush couple days back. Ain’t that just like a Yankee soldier’s way of things? Givin’ honor to that dead Lieutenant Rains who got hisself killed and ever’body else with him?”
DURING all that fighting, Yellow Wolf wondered why the soldiers refused to budge from their squirrel holes they had dug. Instead of coming out to save all the Shadows, for the longest time they instead chose to merely watch the skirmishing from long distance. No matter; it was a glorious fight while it lasted. Lots of riding past the Shadow guns at a gallop, some of the men crawling on their bellies through the tall grass to get close enough to the white men to see faces clearly.
That’s when Yellow Wolf and his friend Wemastahtus recognized one of the young Shadows.
“He is Charley Crooks?” asked Wemastahtus in a whisper after they had all stared in amazement.
“No,” Yellow Wolf replied. “That Charley was at the fight in Lahmotta. This is another Charley, son of a settler who raises his horses at the bottom of the hills, this side of the White Bird Hill.”
“John-son?” Wemastahtus asked.
With a nod, Yellow Wolf said, “I think it is John-son’s boy, the one called Charley.” He held his head up slightly and yelled at the others his announcement: “John-son’s boy, Charley … he is here with the other Shadows. He’s a friend, so do not hurt him! We should do him no harm!”
Lay the Mountains Low Page 20
