Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  She looked at the ground a minute, her face gone tense. He knew his mother was fighting some angry tears.

  So he had dared to ask, “He … he wasn’t killed by the soldiers?”

  “No,” she replied. “He was not here. Tommimo had gone to the Shadow town by the Snake River,* to trade some horses. Others have brought news that my husband has been arrested and won’t be coming back until this war is over.”

  Then she had turned away and scurried back to that bundle of what few belongings she had managed to carry away from the village when the soldiers and Shadows struck Looking Glass. She pulled out a long scrap of blanket and laid it across her arms as if presenting it to him. Yellow Wolf’s fingers had gripped the blanket wrap, the hot blood pounding in his ears blotting out the noisy celebration swirling around them.

  It was his repeater!

  “You have not needed to shoot it, Mother?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I protected it for you, knowing one day you would come back and—if I saved anything from the soldiers—I wanted to protect this rifle for you, Son.”

  Quickly Yellow Wolf wrapped her close in one arm. His mother knew how to use the gun if she needed to against any soldiers or band of Shadows—a good shooter, she was. And his mother was a strong woman, too, capable of riding any wild pony. In the Illahe, the buffalo country near the E-sue-gha far to the east, he had watched her bring down buffalo with a big rifle. This woman would not tremble even at the sudden appearance of a grizzly bear.

  Yellow Wolf knew he was his mother’s son!

  And now he had a sixteen-shot carbine for the war—no more would he have to use the one-shot soldier gun, condemned to searching out soldier bullets for it.

  That night they had camped near the Middle Fork, farther north and close to Kamiah where many of the Non-Treaties went on Sunday morning for their special services. It was the next morning when riders came galloping back to report that they were being watched by some Shadows.

  “Suapies?”

  “No, not soldiers. But a lot of Shadows.”

  By the time the young men under Ollokot, Five Wounds, and Rainbow had returned with their weapons and their red blankets, the whites had scurried to the top of a large hill Yellow Wolf’s people called Possossona. At this place known as Water Passing, the Shadows were throwing up rock barricades they could hide behind. But the white men were unable to hold onto their horses that night after it grew very dark.

  It was a good thing, too, this taking of the horses, because they had found that most of them belonged to Looking Glass’s people.

  “These were taken by those Shadows when they came with the soldiers to drive us from our camp!”

  “Good,” Ollokot had said to the Alpowai. “Now we’ve taken them back and the Shadows can walk on their sore feet if they want to return to their hollows or towns.”

  They kept four-times-ten of the ponies they had run off from Shadows, then led the rest—those they did not want—onto the Camas Prairie and scattered them far from the Shadow strongholds.

  For another day they kept up a little sporadic fire at the whites, just enough to force the Shadows down behind their rock and tree barricades. Even though there had been a lot of shooting, only one warrior was injured: his right trigger finger shot off while he was leading away a pair of Looking Glass’s horses the Shadows stole. In all the excitement, Paktilek had not realized he was hit until he noticed that the mane of the horse he was riding was wet and sticky with blood. A big ring on another finger was badly dented. It had saved the rest of his hand!

  That next morning the chiefs decided it would be better to march upstream a ways.

  Toohoolhoolzote said, “If the Shadows have found us here, then the soldiers will be the next to come.”

  “Yes,” agreed White Bird. “We should take our families and lodges away from this place and deeper into the canyon of the Clearwater.”

  Looking Glass suggested, “We will be safe at Pitayiwahwih; there is room enough for us all to camp there.”

  Away they marched from those Shadows hunkered down in their hollows, just the way the soldiers had been kept in their holes at the far side of the Camas Prairie for many days. Why wouldn’t the Shadows and suapies learn that whenever they attempted to attack the Non-Treaty bands they were always struck back with an even stronger blow?

  Now this morning in that new camp the sun had been long in creeping over the lip of the tall, rocky bluffs just east of the river. Many of the young men slept in after singing, dancing, and courting late into the night. And when they did arise, there was nothing much to do. Already they had lost interest in keeping a close guard on those hillbound Shadows downstream, and the suapies were still far away at the settlements…. So this would be a day to relax, here in this most beautiful of settings.

  Through this narrow canyon the South Fork of the Clearwater flowed strong and clean, braced on the east by sheer cliffs rising more than a thousand feet in height, while to the west rose irregular bluffs. Both walls were inscribed with deep ravines climbing up to grassy rolling plateau. For much of the morning the canyon remained in shadow. Here summer days reigned.

  For Yellow Wolf, it seemed as if the war was holding its breath. Camp would not be moved this day, the sun would be hot, so now had come the time to celebrate—even though there was no more whiskey in the camps. They would hold horse races and games of chance. There would be time for bathing in the cold river, or trying to talk to that young woman in White Bird’s band, the pretty one Yellow Wolf had had his eye on for weeks now. At dusk, some of the older men would put out the call when it came time for the timei—a special race held but once every summer—when each contestant announced to the whole village the name of the young woman whose hand he would be racing for.

  Perhaps she would see in him something worthy, although he was hawk-nosed and snake-eyed, his skin the color of an old saddle many times sweated on. No, Yellow Wolf had not the beautiful burnished copper skin of most Wallowa. He was not a handsome man like Shore Crossing or Ollokot, but in the last few weeks he had won a reputation as a fighter and man of integrity—one who would provide for and protect a woman and the children to come of their union.

  Yellow Wolf had been sitting on his pony, watching some of the horse races on the long flat above the village, when his friend Wemastahtus came up and said with much excitement, “Yesterday a soldier was killed below here. I found him this morning.”

  “I want to see him.”

  Wemastahtus led Yellow Wolf several miles to the spot on down the Clearwater toward Kamiah. The body was lying in some brush by the side of the river trail, almost as if the man were asleep, except that a cloud of flies tormented his eyes, nostrils, and his slack mouth, too, with their black, buzzing fury. The man had a lot of bushy hair on his upper lip that ran down to the bottom of his chin.

  “Maybe he ran away from the army,” Wemastahtus suggested.

  “No,” Yellow Wolf said, “I think he ran away from the Shadows pinned down at Possossonar

  His curiosity sated, Yellow Wolf now wanted to find the young woman with the big eyes. He loped back, reaching the lower end of the village, knowing the chances were good she would take her younger sisters and a brother down to the river to watch the children while they bathed and splashed in the water, now that the sun was high overhead. The best place to tell her his soft words would be in the cool shade of those big cottonwoods here in the quiet of this midday heat, with nothing but the gurgle of the Clearwater—

  That loud boom echoed off the canyon wall, then died as the shattering noise was swallowed by the low hills west of the river.

  At first, every motion stopped, every voice stilled—the air itself suspended in stunned and stupefied silence. Then, as the loud roar faded, Yellow Wolf heard again the buzz of the flies and other wingeds here along the shady bank. A heartbeat later, the first woman’s scream split the dry, hot air.

  Her cry was quickly taken up by a hundred more—women and children
all, scrambling out of the water as a second dull whoosh whistled down the canyon and ended with a terrifying blast that shook the birds out of the nearby trees. Such a whoosh-boom could be nothing but a twoshoots wagon gun: roaring once when it was fired, roaring a second time when its round charge exploded on the far bank, well short of camp.

  Men were shouting now, war leaders exhorting others to grab up their weapons. A young man was riding down the opposite side of the river, waving a blanket back and forth, back and forth over his head in warning.

  Yellow Wolf gazed into the young woman’s frightened eyes a moment as she held out her hand. Yellow Wolf touched it for but a moment, feeling her long, slim, cool fingers—

  “Yellow Wolf!”

  He whirled around, finding Wemastahtus on the low bluff just above him. Then he turned for one last look at the young woman, her eyes full of fury and fight, eyes telling him what her lips did not need to say.

  “I am coming!” he yelled at Wemastahtus, not taking his eyes off her just yet. “We have an enemy to fight today!”

  Her face softened for him but a moment before he turned away, scrambling up the slope.

  “Toohoolhoolzote is already rushing to the bank with a few of his men,” Wemastahtus announced as they raced their ponies through the camp, heading for the lodge of Yellow Wolf’s mother. “I think that old war man wants to be the first to sneak up behind the soldiers!”

  Stripped to nothing but his breechclout like the other warriors rushing past them, Yellow Wolf ducked back out of the lodge with one cartridge belt buckled around his waist, slipping a second belt over his left shoulder. Now with his sixteen-shot repeater in hand as he went into battle for the first time in many weeks, Yellow Wolf snatched the long lead rope from his friend, then leaped onto the pony’s narrow back. Together they raced to the closest ford just upstream from camp, finding Toohoolhoolzote and a few others had already reached the far side—more than twenty, these first to answer the old warrior’s call to action, all of them pitching across the river, racing to throw their bodies between their families and the attacking soldiers.

  Behind them on the west bank the chiefs were shouting their orders to the rest—by this date in their war with the soldiers and Shadows numbering close to three hundred men of fighting age. Quickly they split all those remaining warriors in two groups, both of which would remain behind to protect the camp. One started to stream toward the north, the direction from which the cannon fire had come, where that group of Shadows might still be pinned down on their hilltop. The other group raced to the south, the direction where they had believed Cut-Off Arm was still camped with his soldiers. And those boys too young to fight drove more than two thousand ponies up the gentle slope west of the village, reaching the top of the plateau, where the herd would be safe from the army’s loud guns.

  “Koklinikse!” Toohoolhoolzote bellowed his scolding command at those who swarmed onto the east bank behind him. “Move faster! Faster!”

  Slinging water as they came out of the Clearwater, the first of these most eager of the young men reined their horses into the timber dotting the sharp side of the bluff. Yellow Wolf’s strong pony quickly vaulted him into the lead, clawing its way into one of the two jagged ravines* that carried the defenders in an ascent to the top of the ridge some nine hundred to a thousand feet above the river. Both hearts beat fast, lungs gasping hungrily for air, as man and horse lunged to the top—a leap at a time—the hoofbeats and war cries of the others right on their tail.

  Slipping from the mouth of the rugged right-hand ravine, Yellow Wolf yanked back on the reins of his heaving pony. To his left a dark swarm of soldiers covered the ridge top and prairie to the north of him. They were scurrying around, some headed this way and others headed that way, not seeing him or the first warriors to bristle up on his sides. Suapies running in all directions, forming up then breaking apart as they moved here and there—a strange preparation for a fight.

  As his pony caught its wind, Yellow Wolf watched a stream of soldiers break off and start down another wide ravine leading to the river below. “Can’t you see the soldiers!” he screamed at those who had rushed to the top right behind him. “They’re going to attack our camp! Come on now—we must get up close and do some shooting at them!”

  Without waiting for a word or sign of agreement from the others, Yellow Wolf jabbed his bare heels into the ribs of the animal and shot away, sprinting across that broad flat south of the massing soldiers. A wide canyon suddenly separated the young men from those white enemies. Leaning far back on his horse’s spine, Yellow Wolf urged the horse down the steep wall of the ravine, then rocked forward as the pony clawed its way up the far side, until he found himself in rifle range of the suapies. Now these first warriors had placed their bodies between the soldiers and the spring. The white men would have no water today!

  “Tie your horses here!” growled the deep bullfrog bass of old Toohoolhoolzote as his exhausted pony lunged out of the wide cleft in the ridge and hoof-slid into a thick stand of trees.

  As one the two dozen followed the war chief into a small copse of tall pines, leaped to the ground, and tied off their horses, out of danger from soldier bullets. At the edge of those trees the old chief’s young fighters could see how Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers would soon be making for the edge of the bluff … and from there they could descend into the valley and attack their village.

  “Come, all you young men!” Toohoolhoolzote cheered. “Eeh-heh! We have to stop those soldiers from reaching our camp!”

  “Amtiz!” Yellow Wolf yelled. “Let’s go! We must throw our bodies between the end of this ridge and those soldier guns!”

  “BLESSED Mary and Joseph!” he growled as the firing grew hotter and the Indians stopped their advance dead in its tracks.

  First Sergeant Michael McCarthy wasn’t sure just how many of those redskins they were confronting at the edge of the bluff, but he was sure it had to be at least a hundred!

  At least, that’s how many warriors Perry’s cavalry battalion believed had stopped them cold in the valley of the White Bird last month, a little less than the size of the attacking force that flung itself at Perry’s Cottonwood bivouac and somewhere close to the same number of horsemen who had jumped the seventeen civilians racing for Norton’s ranch. So it made perfect sense a hundred or more of the Nez Perce fighting men must have rushed up the draws to reach this ridge-top prairie, where they managed to stall Howard’s advance in a matter of minutes.

  Surely the general and his officers could repulse this handful of troublesome snipers, having some 450 men at their command after Howard had waited to gather all his troops and all those supplies before setting off across the corner of the Camas Prairie after the hostiles!

  On the eighth of July Howard’s advance had recrossed the Salmon at the mouth of the White Bird. Pushing on with H and I Companies of the First U. S. Cavalry, the general’s men passed by those shallow graves, a few of which were marked by hats suspended at the tops of short sticks, most of the skimpy dirt having settled into the depressions, what with the heavy rains. By midnight they rendezvoused with Perry’s battalion in Grangeville, learning that the Nez Perce were camped on the South Fork of the Clearwater. On the outskirts of town, Howard established what he christened Camp Randall, in honor of the civilian who gave his life in this struggle back on the fifth of July.

  Just after dawn that Monday morning, Perry pushed on for the Clearwater with his four companies of cavalry, crossing to the east side of the South Fork on the Jackson Bridge, which some Nez Perce raiding party had attempted to torch in recent days. The horse soldiers went into camp on the long slope behind the burned-out buildings of Thelbert Walls’s ranch.

  Meanwhile, it took part of the eighth and most of the ninth of the month for Miles’s infantry and Miller’s artillery batteries to ferry themselves across the mighty Salmon—having virtually run out of supplies by the time they established their wretched bivouac at the mouth of the White Bird: without food or
tents or dry blankets. Finally, early on the morning of the tenth, Captain Miles of the Twenty-first Infantry led in his battalion of eight footsore companies. Every man jack of them bailed out of the wagons Howard had sent down to the Salmon for them, collapsing into the grass at Camp Randall, where they promptly fell asleep, knowing it wouldn’t be long before they would be ordered back on the road to catch up to the cavalry once more.

  Over on the South Fork at Walls’s ranch, in those first dim shadows at daylight on the tenth, one of the cavalry pickets opened fire on another guard, making for a brief but lively exchange until the camp discovered they were shooting at themselves and things quieted down once again while they waited out the day and those wagons filled with foot soldiers. They finally rumbled across the bridge and into the midst of the burned-out ranch just before 8:00 P.M. Told to quickly build their fires, choke down their supper, then climb into their blankets, Howard’s command learned they would be marching on the enemy at first light.

  By 7:30 A.M. on the eleventh, Howard gave the honor of the lead for the day to Trimble’s H Company, this time behind a local guide, James T. Silverwood, and a contingent of Nez Perce scouts under Ad Chapman. Behind the rest of Perry’s cavalry battalion came the infantry, then the pack train, along with a few horses detached from the main body, while the artillery brought up the rear, A few miles out of Walls’s place, the advance ran across a small bunch of mares and their foals, horses that Chapman identified as having been stolen from his ranch. To the army’s way of thinking, that was a clue they might be closing on the enemy. Trimble put out skirmishers and they resumed their march.

  In short order, they were climbing a thousand or more feet to reach the high ground between the South and Middle Forks along a well-used mining road, forced to inch back farther and farther from the edge of the bluff where they had hoped to keep an eye trained along the Clearwater for signs of the enemy village or war parties. Hour after hour that clear, breezy morning, the ravines grew deeper, scarring the landscape of the plateau, each one more choked with brush and boulders than the last.