Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  Lew nodded as he rode up and spun to the ground, pitching his two canteens into the pile McConville was supervising at the center of the scene. It was a good spot; that much was for sure. Nearly flat on top, the crest was as good as anyplace to make a last stand.

  “A damn sight better’n that grassy rise on the Camas Prairie,” Lew muttered under his breath as he turned his horse among the others and started toward the breastworks, where all of McConville’s volunteers were feverishly scratching at the ground, digging rifle pits with their belt knives or tin cups. Anything that could move some dirt.

  It wasn’t many minutes before some two dozen horsemen appeared, the first to come investigate. Lew had to give the Nez Perce credit for being smart bastards. They could see the white men had a decided advantage on top of their hill. The warriors didn’t make a charge or press an attack. Instead, they seemed content with surrounding the knoll with more than a hundred fighting men, occasionally firing an ill-placed shot and constantly hurling oaths at the volunteers. Into that long, hot afternoon and evening, it was a long-distance scrap, if anything.

  Then darkness fell and they were all reminded to be extra cautious about making any noise. Their ears were going to have to warn them if any warriors were sneaking up on their fortifications. Besides, there weren’t many of them even trying at some sleep, not the way the volunteers shivered with the cold in their sweat-dampened clothes, none of them having blankets along.

  A little after 11:00 P.M., while the second watch was on duty, the hillside below them fell quiet for the longest time … until the clatter of hooves shattered the starlight.

  “They charging?” some man shrieked in terror.

  “No, goddammit!” came a growl from the other side of the hilltop as the hammer of hoofbeats faded. “The red pricks just run off our horses!”

  “We’re staying put for sure now!” Cearly grumbled.

  Wilmot nodded, “I wasn’t planning on going nowhere anyway.”

  Not long after midnight the warriors burst forth with a litany of unearthly war cries and screeches, accompanied by the calls of wild birds, the howl of a prairie wolf, and the scream of the mountain panther. It had lasted for the better part of an hour when, from all sides, the warriors opened up a sudden and frightening gunfire. Tongues of yellow and red jetted from the muzzles of their rifles, many of which had been stolen from the dead in White Bird Canyon.

  “Just stay down!” McConville hollered.

  “You heard the colonel!” Wilmot shouted. “Keep your heads down and they won’t have nothing to hit!”

  After listening to some steady, sustained fire coming from one of the rifle pits, Wilmot crawled over to find a volunteer firing into the black of night.

  “Elias,” Lew whispered, “just what the blazes you shooting at?”

  Nonplussed, Elias Darr looked over his shoulder and replied, “I-I don’t know, Lew. It’s so goddamned dark I can’t see a blamed thing … but I thought it was a good idea to keep the ark a-moving.”

  With a smile, Wilmot put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Elias, I figger an even better idea is to save your ammunition for morning, when we might need to move the ark even more.”

  Some sporadic harassing fire from the enemy was kept up on into the blackening of night as the moon fell. Then as first light started to bloom, the firing died away and the hillside fell quiet again. Afraid of drawing a bullet, the volunteers maintained an uneasy silence.

  “Hey, you fellas!” a voice cried from down the hillside, heavy with Nez Perce accent.

  The volunteers fell silent, watchful and wary of some trick.

  Finally one of them hollered, “What you want, you red nigger?”

  “We going to breakfast allee same Hotel de France!” the voice called out, referring to one of the best hotels in Lewiston. “You fellas come over and eat with us!”

  Wilmot couldn’t help it. He started snorting with laughter at the image that created in his head—this band of grubby civilian horsemen setting down for breakfast in the dining room of that fancy hotel with some painted, half-naked Non-Treaty savages.

  As a lark, Lew sang out, “No—I got a better idea, fellas. You boys come on in here and have breakfast with us! C’mon now.”

  For a moment it was deathly quiet; then the voice came again from the timber, “I no think so, fellas. You ain’t got nothing to eat much!”

  McConville chuckled, grinning at Wilmot. “Leastways they got that right, Lew. We don’t have much at all in the way of hold-out food!”

  An hour later, as his pocket watch was nearing 7:00 A.M., several of the men on the other side of the breastworks called out a warning.

  “They’re coming at us now, for God’s sake!”

  Bunker was pointing as Wilmot came loping over. Down near the base of the hill in the summer sunlight they could see at least a hundred of the warriors lining up in a broad front, as if preparing to make a massed charge on foot.

  “Hold your fire until you see the color of the paint on their faces!” Wilmot ordered.

  “That’s right,” McConville agreed. “Make every bullet count!”

  Then as the volunteers were hunkering down behind the rocks and deadfall, preparing to sell their lives dearly in those shallow rifle pits, a pair of Nez Perce rode up to the warrior lines, waving and gesturing. In seconds that line of chargers dispersed, turning away to fetch up their ponies lazily grazing in the grassy swales below the hill. One by one and in pairs the warriors mounted up and started away, heading back in the direction of their camp.

  Finally, McConville asked, “Hey, Lew—you think they pulled off for good? Or is this a trick?”

  He wagged his head. “I dunno, Colonel. Just when a fella thinks he’s got these Nez Perce figgered out, that’s when they’ll up and surprise him—catch ’im in a trap … and kill ’im.”

  * “Misery Hill” (sometimes called Camp Misery) is located on present-day Doty Ridge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JULY 9–10, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  More Dispatches From the Front—

  Serious State of Affairs.

  WASHINGTON, July 7.—The following telegram from Gen. McDowell, commanding the military department of the Pacific, was received at the war department this morning:

  SAN FRANCISCO, July 5.—Adjutant General Washington.—The following telegrams, both from Lewiston, have just been received from my aide-de-camp I had sent up to Gen. Howard’s command. The first telegram, July 4th, says: No news direct from Gen. Howard since the first. The Klamath company is expected to-morrow. Shall go with it. Captain Whipple’s detachment struck a band of Nez Perces, under Looking Glass, at Kawais, Sunday, and inflicted severe punishment, capturing a large amount of stock. Indian Inspector Watkins, who has recently been with Gen. Howard, writes from Lapwai this afternoon, to Gen. Sully here, that this success, and Gen. Howard’s vigorous action are producing marked results. Looking Glass wishes to come in with his band. Watkins states that Joseph has crossed the Salmon and is making east for the Bitter Rock country, with General Howard at his heels and Whipple barring the way, but Joseph thus harassed is on the point of breaking up. There are no signs of the other Indians taking a hand.

  The second dispatch is dated the 5th, and says the following was received from Captain Perry, dated 9 a.m., and that the Cottonwood Indians have been around us all day in force and very demonstrative. It is unsafe to send anything to him until the Klamath company arrives. He urges that it be sent to his command with all dispatch. Information just up by boat postpones the arrival of that company a day or two. Still no news from Howard. It is probable his courier has been intercepted. A citizen from Colville just in represents the situation on the Spokanes as most threatening. General Sully, who is here, shares in his apprehensions. It seems there is ample ground for General Howard’s application for more troops.

  Signed

  KEELER,

  Aide de Camp.

  Instead
of sending the infantry as directed I have determined to send it as General Howard desired, that is by rail to San Francisco and by steamer to Portland, thence by boats to Lewiston. The troops en route to Boize City, Idaho, will be sufficient, I believe, for that district, which can be more readily reinforced than that of Columbia. I have ordered all the troops from Fort Yuma, two companies to Boize, and have broken up Camp Independence and sent the company to the same destination.

  MCDOWELL,

  Major General.

  “HAVE YOURSELF A LOOK, COLONEL.”

  Wilmot handed his looking glass to Ed McConville. It was no more than a heartbeat before the civilian commander took the long brass tube from his eye. “That for sure looks like a band of volunteers coming our way, Lew.”

  “And that war party headed for them?”

  McConville half-grinned. “You think you can come up with some way to help those fellas afore that war party rides ’em down?”

  Wilmot stood at the edge of the breastworks. “Can you spare twenty men?”

  “Surely. That’ll even up the odds something nicely,” McConville declared, then called for volunteers to accompany Lew Wilmot as he went to spoil the war party’s ambush of those horsemen headed for their hilltop fortress.

  What with the Nez Perce running off all their good horses just before midnight, those twenty-one men had nothing more than a dozen poor and played-out horses the Nez Perce considered unfit to ride. Instead, Lew and the others vaulted over their low rock-and-log walls and started down the southern slope on foot, ever watchful that they themselves weren’t being lured into a trap by the wily Nez Perce who had disappeared into a ravine that would eventually carry them onto the prairie near the oncoming white riders.

  By the time those civilian horsemen were a half-mile away from Wilmot’s volunteers, the Indians put in a show just off to the riders’ left…. But it was only a matter of heartbeats until Lew had his twenty spread out five feet apart and kneeling down to take steady aim at the enemy advancing on the horsemen, thereby springing a surprise on those who had hoped to spring a surprise of their own.

  Beneath an intermittent shower of bullets and epithets from the chagrined warriors, the riders continued on their advance until they approached Wilmot’s footmen.

  “By the glory of ol’ Jupiter hisself!” roared George Shearer. “If that ain’t Lew Wilmot!”

  He loped up close to his friend as the horsemen swirled around those twenty men on foot, every one of them huzzahing and congratulating one another on their rescue.

  “Seeing your face here must mean the soldiers are right behind you!” Wilmot bellowed as they shook.

  Shearer stopped pumping his friend’s arm, his face draining of joy. “No, Lew. There ain’t no soldiers comin’ behind us.”

  “N-no soldiers? Didn’t Howard get to Grangeville after we left on the eighth?”

  The Southerner nodded. “Says he ain’t marchin’ till he gets all his men up from their mess gettin’ across the Salmon.”

  It wasn’t good news, not good news at all, they carried back to those breastworks. Instead of learning they had only to wait a matter of hours for the arrival of Howard’s column, McConville’s volunteers could come to no other conclusion but that they had been abandoned by the army.

  For some of those men, like Lew Wilmot, it felt as if they had been discarded and left to the Nez Perce all over again.

  “Lew, I want you and Penny to pick the two best horses George’s men rode in here,” McConville ordered.

  “You best be sending me with a message for Howard,” Wilmot said. “And your dispatch better say something about soldiers sitting on their asses while civilians are fighting this goddamned war for ’em.”

  McConville shrugged it off. “The two of you will carry word to Howard all right,” he told them both, “but rather than infuriate that pompous ol’ Bible-thumper, I’ll inform him of our dire situation and only request reinforcements.”

  After darkness had fully swallowed the valley of the Clearwater, Lew Wilmot and Benjamin Penny led those two strong horses out of the breastworks and down the bare slope, making for the closest patch of timber. There they would wait for a few minutes, listening to every night sound, before they finally mounted up and dared to ride into the open beneath that blackened banner of starry sky.

  Heart thumping, Wilmot finally nudged Ben Penny with a tap on the shoulder, and they both mounted up. Without a word exchanged between them, the horsemen quickly shook hands, reined about, and put their heels to their mounts, leaping out of the timber onto the barren ground where a few hours earlier a swarm of warriors had been waving blankets and hollering for white blood.

  Lew couldn’t recall if he had remembered to breathe that first mile or not. But by the time he figured they had come a half-dozen miles on the backs of those racing horses, Lew Wilmot had indeed begun to breathe easier and finally started thinking about Louisa and those children as the animal rocked beneath him in the dark. Closer and closer, with every lunge of those powerful legs. With every mile, he was leaving that enemy village and those miserable breastworks farther and farther behind.

  “You see that?” Penny asked more than five harrowing hours later. It might be the dim flicker of a fire. And from the outline of the stars to the south it appeared that was the heights rising above Mount Idaho just ahead … but the fire lay to the southeast instead of the south. Unless he’d gotten turned around. Another glow appeared now as they rounded the brow of a low hill. Then within another mile and a broad sweep of prairie more than a hundred watch fires lay in the distance.

  “That can’t be Grangeville!” Wilmot cried, his voice raspy with disuse.

  Benjamin Penny exclaimed, “What the hell are them fires?”

  “That has to be Howard’s camp. And those are his soldiers.”

  His eyes stung, too. They had made their escape.

  The sky was graying in the east by the time the two horsemen guided their lathered animals across the South Fork of the Clearwater on the Jackson Bridge and reined into that great encampment spread near the gutted, looted ruin of the Walls ranch.*

  “Who goes there!” a cry came out of the dawn’s murky light.

  “We’re looking for General Howard!”

  The guards and curious soldiers formed a cordon, refusing to allow the civilians through.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “We need to speak with the general,” Wilmot said, trying hard to keep his anger from boiling. He shook an arm to the north. “There’s more’n eighty men fighting for their lives off yonder! We’ve found the goddamned village for you! Why don’t you soldiers get up off your rumps and come fight the redskins with us?”

  “I’ll take you to General Howard,” a voice announced as a young officer pushed his way through the older enlisted men.

  The officer asked the civilians to dismount and turn over their horses to a saddler sergeant before the three set off down a row of company tents where morning fires were being coaxed back into life and sleepy, trail-weary men were slowly getting onto their feet, rubbing knuckles into gritty eyes.

  “I should be ready to move on the morrow,” General Oliver Otis Howard told the civilians after he had listened to their story and told them he was aware of McConville’s plight from an earlier messenger. “Until then, I can’t advise engaging the Nez Perce.”

  “Right now, right here,” Wilmot said with no little exasperation, “you’ve got twice as many soldiers as they got warriors!”

  “Good sir, I will not be dissuaded by you from my campaign,” Howard snipped. “I think it goes without question that I know more about such things than either of you, or Captain McConville.”

  “He’s a colonel now,” Lew said.

  “A … colonel you say,” Howard replied with the hint of a grin as two of his aides turned aside with contemptuous smiles on their faces. “Please tell Colonel McConville that he and his battalion are in this kettle of fish because he did not seek out my advice or attempt
to work in concert with me.”

  “I think the entire battalion volunteered to go on our mission because your officers and this damned army haven’t done anything but eat tack soup for more’n two weeks!” Wilmot exploded, watching a sudden look of shock cross Howard’s face. Instantly he figured he was better off not shaming this soldier. “The Nez Perce are making fools of your officers, General.”

  “I got here as quickly as I could, sir,” a voice announced as it came up behind Wilmot and Penny.

  Lew turned to see Captain David Perry stepping up beside Howard.

  “Are you gentlemen acquainted with Colonel Perry, commander of my cavalry battalion?”

  “Yeah, I know him,” Wilmot answered. “Last run onto him at Cottonwood.”

  Howard turned slightly, speaking to Perry. “These men have just come in from McConville’s volunteers, with another request for us to go to their assistance.”

  The captain said, “You explained to them that we’ll be waiting until we have our entire infantry and artillery wings reunited with us, General?”

  “I can see the color of this horse!” Wilmot roared. “You fellas are just like all them Union generals was in the war: waiting till you got more soldiers than the enemy before you’ll think of budging—”

  As two of the general’s aides stepped forward, Howard said, “This interview is over.”

  “Over?” Wilmot snapped. “I was figuring I might be able to talk sense to you, General Howard. But I can see how this Cottonwood coward has poisoned your mind!”

  “Coward?” Perry growled.

  “That’s what you are when you didn’t come to the aid of our civilians last Thursday.”

  “You’re accusing me of cowardice?”

  “I haven’t seen a goddamned thing to make me change my opinion of you.”

  “You’re nothing less than a low-class liar, mister!” Perry snapped. “Fabrications and nothing but half-truths, General.”

  Wilmot snorted, “What lies, Perry?”