Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  “You just told the general I never came to your aid,” Perry retorted. “I did send out the cavalry and infantry both, and a fieldpiece under Lieutenant Shelton, too!”

  “Not till you were shamed into it!” Wilmot said forcefully, but to Howard instead of speaking to Perry. “Then George Shearer led your men out to our position on his own—alone!”

  “I have no control over the actions of civilians,” Perry snarled, whirling on Howard. “I had an entire train of supplies and ammunition destined for you, which I had to protect, General. I could not chance that train falling into enemy hands because of their diversionary tactic—”

  “The only reason you sent help was you were shamed by your own officers into sending us some relief!” Wilmot’s voice rose a notch higher.

  “Get out of here now!” Perry shouted, his face flushing. “Your very presence in this army camp fills me with contempt!”

  “C-contempt?” Wilmot echoed loudly with a snort. “You ain’t got one-half the contempt for me that I hold for you—so I will leave your goddamned camp!”

  Twisting around on his heel, Wilmot was brushing past Penny when Howard bellowed, “Stop where you are! Arrest that man!”

  Flicking a glance over his shoulder, Lew saw several of the general’s staff lunge for him. On instinct he bolted into a run, but he got no more than three long steps before he found himself in the arms of a pair of armed guards. And both men were a lot beefier than rail-thin Lew Wilmot. They manhandled him back to Howard, his toes barely dragging the ground.

  “Perry—when you die, you’re gonna be turned away from the gates of both Heaven and Hell!” Lew growled as the soldiers clamped down all the harder on his arms and removed his pistol from its holster. “When you die and your body’s gonna be laying out on the prairie … the coyote’s gonna tuck his tail between his legs and sneak off. The buzzard will fly away from your stinking carcass, and even the little worm that would delight to worry the carcass of a lowly dog will crawl away from yours in disgust—”

  “Mr. Wilmot!” the general shouted, red-faced. “It makes my blood boil to hear a civilian blaspheme an officer!”

  Struggling between the two large men who imprisoned him, Wilmot said, “Not half as much as it makes my blood boil for this coward to tell me right to my face that I lied!”

  The general took a deep breath, staring at the graying sky for a long moment as if attempting to regain his composure. “Why don’t you calm yourself, and we’ll put this entire affair behind us. I would rather you serve as a guide for us, to show my column where that Indian camp is, instead of placing you under arrest.”

  Wilmot stared hard at Perry, then turned his withering gaze on Howard. “No, because you’re both cut of the same cloth. I ain’t gonna guide for either one of you. Hell, I prefer fighting alongside the Indians now to fighting for your officers!”

  Howard jutted his bearded chin angrily. “Take this civilian to the officer of the day and tell him I’ve placed him under arrest.”

  “What for?” Wilmot snarled as the guards uprooted him off his feet once more.

  “I don’t have to have a reason right now, Mr. Wilmot,” Howard said. Then, looking at one of the guards, he added, “Have the officer of the day put him in shackles until tomorrow when we’re ready to march. That should give you enough time to cool down and reconsider your contempt for the officers who are here prosecuting this campaign … so you civilians can live in peace on what was once Nez Perce land.”

  “Is that it, General?” Wilmot shouted over his shoulder. “You and your soldiers don’t wanna fight no war to protect your own goddamned citizens?”

  Howard took two steps following the guards who had a firm grip on their prisoner and said, “Sometimes, Mr. Wilmot, in this dirty little war, I wonder who really needs protecting from whom. If it isn’t the Nez Perce who need our protection from the likes of you!”

  * Just outside the present-day community of Harpster, Idaho.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  JULY 11, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  More of the Mexican Border

  Troubles.

  —

  The Administration Strongly

  Favoring Invasion.

  —

  No Satisfactory News From

  General Howard.

  —

  OREGON.

  —

  Latest from the Indian War.

  SAN FRANCISCO, July 9.—A press dispatch from Portland has the following from Lewiston, under date of the 6th, via Walla Walla, 9th: Left Horse-shoe bend and came down Salmon river near its junction with the Snake, leaving Howard in force up the river. A courier express is just in from Colonel Perry who was en route for Howard with a pack train, and an escort of thirty men, says he was attacked on the 4th and ten soldiers and two citizens killed. Captain Whipple, in command at Cottonwood, came to the rescue and repulsed the Indians. The latter are in force around Colonel Perry and Captain Whipple who have only force enough for defence. The route is unsafe to Cottonwood. It is a bold stroke of Joseph and his band, and it is reported by signal to the Indians north and east, and stirs them up to the offensive … The Indians have destroyed some fields and gardens and rifled some dwellings. News here this morning indicates a purpose to meet or act with those on the Spokane and such a move will imperil all the upper settlements on the Palouse. It is evident that a volunteer cavalry in large force ought to be put in the field to reinforce General Howard and stop this uprising before it assumes larger and more definite proportions.

  Fort Lapwai

  July 11, 1877

  Dear Mamma,

  … Everything here has been in such confusion that I believe my mind is in the same condition. I can H tell you, or expect you to imagine, what a horrible time we have had and the unsettled state of everything for the last few weeks. I shall be so thankful when it is all over and we can go to sleep at night without imagining that we will be awakened by hearing Indian yells before morning.

  You probably see by the papers what Mr. Joseph is doing. He is the smartest Indian I ever heard of, and does the most daring and impudent things. The command under General Howard in the field is so small that scarcely anything more can be done than to protect settlements. The country all about this region is so particularly adapted to Indian fighting that Joseph has every advantage and would have, even if the soldiers outnumbered him three to one. We know that Joseph’s force numbers over two hundred, and we think it may be much more, as it is thought that there are a great many Indians who have joined him lately. No one has any doubts but that a few more successes for his band will bring to him all the Non-Treaty Indians in this Department, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them, different tribes all scattered along the Columbia River. Another regiment of infantry will be here within three weeks, but what Joseph and White Bird will do in those three weeks, no one knows. At first the idea was that Joseph (Indian like) was getting out of the road and making for the buffalo country. There was great fear that he would get off, but it was soon discovered that he had no idea of getting away, and that he was quietly doing all the mischief he could, and reinforcing his band, and preparing for a fight with the soldiers. He says he can whip them. I do hope there won’t be a chance for him to try until more troops get here.

  Companies of volunteers are gathering from all around, and they will help to swell the number. Colonel Perry was here for three or four days last week. He came in to escort a packtrain for supplies.

  … Some of the stories of the poor people who have suffered so much make your blood run cold. There was something dreadfully touching to me in the defense that the Norton family made. They were among the first of the settlers molested*…

  We are uneasy today about a packtrain of arms and ammunition that left here yesterday with an escort of one company of cavalry (50 men) and about 20 Indian scouts. They feared an attack, as the Indians know of the train, and we heard they were going to jump it.

>   Your loving daughter,

  Emily F.

  HIS CHRISTIAN NAME WAS JOE ALBERT.

  Painful as it was for his traditional parents, in recent years young Joe had moved his own family onto the reservation and become one of the peaceful Treaty Indians who lived and farmed near Lapwai.

  When trouble broke out with the Non-Treaty bands of White Bird, Toohoolhoolzote, and Joseph’s Wallowa, Joe Albert answered the one-armed soldier chief’s call for scouts to lead the suapies to find those bad warriors who had murdered many Shadow settlers and burned their farms. Joe led the soldiers into the valley of Lahmotta, where a few of Ollokof’s warriors turned the frightened, spooked soldiers around and sent them fleeing.

  Rather than kill them—as they had done with any suapie they found alive on the battlefield—Ollokof’s warriors captured three of those Christian trackers scouting for the army. Although many of the young men had screamed for their blood and the women heaped scorn upon the trio, the chiefs decided they would release the three, once the prisoners had vowed to never again raise arms against the Non-Treaty bands or help the soldiers in what everyone believed would be a quick little war.

  “If we catch you again, then we will whip you with hazel switches.”

  Which was a punishment much worse than death itself.

  After Robinson Minthon declared he wanted to stay with the White Bird band, the other two vowed they would return home to wives and children, even though both had relations among the Non-Treaties. And since the pair had their soldier horses taken from them, the young warrior Yellow Wolf gave Yuwishakaikt a pony to ride, while a kind woman took pity upon Joe Albert. She gave him one of her old travois horses for his ride north.

  Still nursing the invisible wounds his pride had suffered by the time he reached Lapwai, Albert eagerly enlisted to work for Cut-Off Arm when he went to punish the warring Nee-Me-Poo—despite his promise to the Non-Treaty chiefs … even though the white men were often slow on the back trail and sometimes, to Joe’s way of thinking, might even be a little frightened of confronting the warriors again. Yet he stayed with the suapies, even when they were turned back by the river and forced to return to the mouth of White Bird Creek.

  As they plodded slowly up the steep canyon, it was immediately apparent how the heavy rains had been suffered upon the land while Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers were on the west side of the Salmon: washing away what skimpy soil the soldiers had scraped over the battle dead. But Cut-Off Arm did not stop to rebury his dead. It was nearing sundown and they still had many miles to go before the advance soldiers reached the settlement called Grangeville. The first of the officers and soldiers did not drop from their horses until the great darkness at the middle of night.

  Then Gut-Off Arm had them on the march again at dawn … halting and going into camp after crossing the old mining bridge that spanned the South Fork of the Clearwater. From the many charred and splintered timbers it was plain the warrior bands had attempted—but failed—to destroy the bridge. To Joe, it was a sure sign the Non-Treaties were planning to stay in this part of the country.

  The soldiers had lain in camp through the next day,* waiting for more troops, which did not reach them until late in the afternoon. At long last, in this camp scattered below the bluffs on the east side of the South Fork, Cut-Off Arm now had all his suapies ready to go in search of battle.

  Joe Albert had been ready for some time. Now, after so long a wait, the soldiers would strike the offending warriors, punish them and their women, too; then everything would return to normal once more. When that end to the troubles came, Joe could again visit his father and mother—both Dreamers—without being shamed by so many in the Non-Treaty camp that he had chosen to become a Christian. It should not take long—just one good fight.

  After all, Cut-Off Arm had enough soldiers now. One of the scouts who talked the Shadow tongue made marks on the ground for those scouts who did not know the white man’s talk. Each mark counted for ten suapies, mule packers, or the civilians who traipsed along with the soldiers. One mark after another, after another, until there were fifty scratches on the ground to signify all the white men who would attack the warrior bands. White Bird, Toohoolhoolzote, Joseph, and even Looking Glass did not stand any chance of getting away now.

  They would hang in the white man way of retribution for having a hand in killing all those Shadow women and children. War was not supposed to be fought against the wives and little ones. But the bad warriors had mixed whiskey and gunpowder, then done very, very bad things, sometimes terrible things, to the women and children. As it was explained in the white man’s Book of Heaven, the time had come that these evil ones should pay for their sins.

  At dawn the following morning, Cut-Off Arm started north along the South Fork, his long, long column strung out on the broken pine-dotted ridge that rose more than eight hundred feet above the river below. Many steep ravines and coulees made it impossible for the column to travel anywhere near the edge of the bluff. Instead, the soldiers had to make ever-widening detours to skirt around the heads of the deep ravines. The sun rose high and hot that morning as the Nee-Me-Poo scouts made fewer and fewer trips to the very edge of the ridge to look down at the river searching for the Non-Treaty village.

  Since no one among the Shadows knew for sure where the camp lay, Cut-Off Arm was depending upon his trackers to find it for him while the bluffs rose higher and higher on that east side of the river, eventually more than a thousand feet above the South Fork. And the ravines grew steeper, deeper, and darker too, each one requiring a longer detour for the grumbling soldiers. The sun was nearing its zenith, burning in the sky after so many, many days of cold, rainy weather. Joe was sweating heavily in his wool soldier jacket and broad-brimmed black cavalry hat. He wondered when Cut-Off Arm would allow the column a midday halt to rest the horses and catch a nap under a little shade—

  Suddenly the white men were shouting, cheering, excitedly forming up, shuffling this way and that. So much noise—

  “They found the camp!” came the cry in the middle of all that pandemonium. One of the other two Treaty scouts was shouting as the pair came galloping back from the front of the march.

  “Narrow-Eye Chapman found the camp!” announced the other, shaking his soldier rifle in the air. “It is back upstream a ways! Just above the mouth of the Cottonwood!”

  Racing their ponies through the shifting masses of white men, sprinting across the bluff, Joe and the others stopped at the pine-covered edge of the ridge and gazed down into the narrow valley of the Clearwater. There, off to their left a long ways, lay the camp of the Non-Treaty bands.

  “The soldiers almost missed them!” Captain John said.

  “Nearly passed them by!”

  Then Joe observed, “They are still a long way back—too far to attack from here “

  “I think the suapies will have to find a way down to the valley to make their fight,” James Reuben said.

  “If they don’t, then the Non-Treaties will get away before the soldiers can capture the village,” Albert declared.

  “They’re not going to wait to find a way down!” Captain John said. “Look!”

  When they turned, looking through the trees, the scouts watched some of the suapies hustling one of the two wagon guns through the patchy evergreens and right up to the edge of the bluff, where they were hollering at one another. Farther away at the edge of the ridge, Cut-Off Arm and his soldier chiefs stopped their horses at the edge and peered down as the wagon gun belched its first charge. It made a lot of noise, but no damage, as the shot landed in the river far short of its mark—for the village stood a long, long way upstream.

  The suapies around the wagon gun shouted at one another again and went about their crazy business with the weapon, swabbing and reloading it for a second charge. Which landed a little closer this time. A little better with the third shot … but it was soon clear to Joe Albeit that the wagon gun would never come close to those Non-Treaty lodges.

  But as h
e peered down into the valley, through the drifting shreds of dirty cannon smoke, Albert could see that—even while the huge black balls had failed to reach the camp—the noise of the gun and the explosion of those charges was not lost on the warrior bands. The camp was a swirl of motion: men and women racing about on horses and on foot, bathers leaping out of the river, children darting among the lodges, arms flailing in terror.

  Riders bristling with weapons appeared at the edges of camp, near the Cottonwood and on the bank of the Clearwater. It appeared they were prepared to fight … if they could only find their invisible enemy.

  Of a sudden, in the midst of all that blur and dust and panic gripping the village down below, Joe was struck with an instant horror—wondering just where his father was.

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

  * Tuesday, July 10, 1877.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  KHOY-TSAHL, 1877

  YELLOW WOLF HAD NOT BEEN THIS HAPPY IN A LONG, long time. Two days ago Looking Glass’s Alpowai band had rejoined the Non-Treaties, and for the first time since this war began, Yellow Wolf was reunited with his mother, Yiyik Wasumwah.

  Her cheeks were wet as she held her son’s face between her hands, chattering like a happy, happy jay. Then she would lay her cheek against his bare chest and hug him, sighing all the while. After a moment, she would again hold his face in her hands and stare up at her son, telling him how tall he looked, young warrior that he was now.

  “He killed four suapies at Lahmottar Five Wounds had announced as he came riding by in that happy rejoining of the people.

  “Yes,” agreed Rainbow. “Yellow Wolf is a true guardian of the Nee-Me-Poo!”

  Staring into his mother’s eyes, he asked, “Where is Tommimol”

  Yellow Wolf’s stepfather was three-quarters French and had been raised a member of Joseph’s Wallowa, but for the past few winters they had lived with Yellow Wolf’s mother’s people, the Alpowai who farmed on the Clearwater.