Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  After a few minutes of staring at the foolhardy steward, the sergeant finally asked, “Them wounded the surgeon’s working on … you say they’re really wanting some water in a bad way, are they, soldier?”

  With a reluctant nod, the soft-cheeked steward said, “They was begging for water like it was life itself, sir.”

  Glancing for a moment at the rear of their lines, where Surgeon Sternberg had erected his hospital, McCarthy eventually raised his voice to announce, “I’m asking you weeds for volunteers. Any man of you to crawl to the spring with these here canteens for the wounded?”

  He waited a minute more, glancing left and right along the line. “Any one of you—”

  “I’ll go with you, Sarge.”

  McCarthy turned back to the left, finding Private Fowler rocking up onto his knees, carbine in hand. For a long moment he measured the young fair-haired soldier, discovering no recklessness, no bravado, about him. The sergeant nodded in appreciation to the blue-eyed youth.

  “Awright, you weed. Leave your carbine right there if you want, for you’ll need to fill your hands with these goddamned canteens.”

  “I-I’d just as soon take my rifle with me, Sarge,” Charles E. Fowler replied.

  “Have it any way you want.” McCarthy sighed. “Let’s do this.”

  As they started over the barricade and away from the rifle pits, Parnell’s voice boomed behind them.

  “Give them brave boys some cover! Any of them bleeming bastards open up on them two, let ’em have it! Watch for the muzzle fire and let the redskins have it!”

  Zigging and zagging across the grassy field, McCarthy and Fowler reached the brush-choked spring with a gasp of surprise that they hadn’t been hit by those few random shots igniting the waning darkness from the Indian lines. Both collapsed to their bellies and immediately cupped their hands into the cool water, lapping at what little they managed to bring to their lips. One by one they filled the canteens, holding them under the surface of the shallow spring as the air gurgled past the necks.

  “We had it easy getting here, you know,” the private said softly. “Gonna be weighed down with all this water now getting back out.”

  McCarthy worried the top back onto the last of his canteens. “I figger we ain’t got much a choice, soldier. We stay here—or we run best we can back to the lines.”

  “I’m f-for running, sir.”

  “Lead off, soldier. I’ll cover your back door.”

  They hadn’t trudged under the weight of those canteens more than twenty yards when the first bullet whistled past, cutting the strap on a canteen Fowler carried. It spun to the grass. The instant the private stopped and stooped to retrieve it, McCarthy lumbered to a halt over him. “G’won! G’won, goddammit! Leave the damn thing!”

  As they rocked into a lumbering gait once more, McCarthy could see how Parnell was just getting to his feet above his riflemen, directing fire toward the trees where the Nez Perce marksmen lay hidden. At times in that sprint, the sergeant turned, bringing the carbine to his shoulder, more than relieved he hadn’t left his weapon behind. Quickly snapping off a shot at a puff of smoke just then appearing in the distant brush, the sergeant raked open the trapdoor. As the copper cartridge came spinning from the breech, he shoved in a new round.

  Whirling around again, he started running, the heavy canteens swinging rhythmically in great arcs from both shoulders. And noticed for the first time how Parnell was still standing, fully exposed as he directed the cover fire. The huge, fleshy lieutenant was waving the two of them on toward the barricades.

  With each lunging step, the canteens swung front, then back in opposing arcs that threatened to pull McCarthy off-balance at every stride. An enemy bullet whimpered past just as he reached the breastworks and was dragged down by Parnell and another man. Two others already had Fowler on the ground, patting him over as they searched for wounds, yanking those blessed canteens from his shoulders.

  McCarthy clambered to his hands and knees. “Back off, you goddamned weeds!” he roared, kicking at a man who had pulled at a stopper without even taking the canteen from Fowler’s neck.

  Every one of them froze. Then one of the soldiers said, “Sarge, we just covered your retreat, so I was thinking we all was due a li’l drink of this here water—”

  “No, you ain’t due no drink till them wounded get theirs,” he growled back. “Not till they’ve had their fill.” He knelt beside Fowler. “You think you can get your canteens and mine over to the hospital from here?”

  Fowler grinned hugely, his blue eyes sparkling. “Damn right I can, Sergeant.”

  McCarthy watched the soldier start away, mindful of the uneasy silence that surrounded him. He suddenly called to Fowler, “Say, Private! I’ll see to it Cap’n Trimble hears of this.”

  Fowler stopped, looking back over his shoulder at his first sergeant.

  “Fact is, I’ll see the cap’n makes you a cawpril for this, soldier. Any private sticks his neck out to make that run you just done for the sake of our wounded … least he deserves is a goddamn cawpril’s stripes!”

  *Located in the ravine currently called Anderson Creek.

  *At the end of the Nez Perce War, Captain George H. Burton reported: “It is explained by the Indians themselves, who acknowledge freely that they have but little fear of the short gun, in consequence of the short range of the carbine and the difficulty of aiming a piece so light and short with accuracy. …”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JULY 12, 1877

  AS THE DARKNESS HAD DEEPENED AROUND HIS LINES, General Oliver Otis Howard had learned more and more of the many wild rumors circulating among the men at the front regarding the extent of their casualties. Some were reporting that as many as one in four men had been killed or dragged back to the surgeon’s hospital.

  That sort of thing was like a smoldering fire to a unit’s fighting morale: If you didn’t stomp it out right at the start, it could flare up when and where you least expected it. He had seen enough of that sort of reckless, groundless rumor during the recent War of Rebellion.

  Howard brushed aside offers to carry word out to the front lines from his aides. Instead, he had announced he was himself going to reassure the troops their casualties were minor in number.

  “Besides,” he told his staff, “this will give me a chance to reconnoiter our position in relation to the Nez Perce lines.”

  For more than an hour he had walked the barricades and rifle pits, calmly buoying the men, contradicting the wildfire rumors, and assessing the strengths of his own fortifications while measuring the weaknesses of the enemy. By 4:30 A.M. as the sky grayed, he was back at headquarters among those stacks of pack saddles and crates, blowing on a cup of scalding coffee.

  “The men appear exhausted, General,” declared First Lieutenant Melville C. Wilkinson.

  “Exhausted perhaps, but not discouraged,” Howard corrected. Then he glanced at the hospital a moment before continuing, “Our torn and bleeding comrades give us cheer by their brave words spoken, by their silent suffering.”

  He drank his coffee in silence as this new day came aborning, privately brooding on the failures that had turned what should have been nothing more than a brief flare-up by a few renegades into a full-scale war threatening to spill over the borders of his department.

  Perry’s singular defeat at the White Bird had convinced Howard that, man for man, these Non-Treaty bands were at the very least the equal of his best soldiers. Since that debacle, he had learned that what the Nez Perce lacked in precision drill and unit discipline they more than made up for in their fighting zeal and the accuracy of their aim. Especially on horseback—something he had never expected to see from mounted warriors. If he were to be successful against such a band of zealots, Otis realized he must be very, very cautious in not overplaying his hand. Another defeat like Perry’s at White Bird would likely bring other disaffected tribes in the Northwest to Joseph’s banner.

  And that would likely mean the end of
Howard’s military career, the end of everything he had ever cherished as a fighting man.

  Just after dawn Howard made his play for the spring—a force of his men under Captains Miller and Perry finally managing to rout the Nez Perce snipers from the spring and secure the area for his command. Which meant the firing at that end of the battlefield quieted down somewhat and the men could begin taking the first of the horses and mules to the spring in rotation. In the general’s most private thoughts, this was the first tangible sign that the tide of this battle might well be turning in his favor. The end might be in sight. He thanked God for that glimmer of hope on the horizon, then ordered that coffee and freshly baked bread be taken out to all the men on the front line.

  “They haven’t had a meal since their breakfast yesterday,” he told aide-de-camp Wilkinson. “Let’s feed the men before we see what deviltry this day brings.”

  But despite all those hopes given birth with that dawn, the firing from both lines steadily increased in tempo and intensity as the air grew hotter. Determined that this would not be his Waterloo, Howard put every available man on the line, ordered to dig in and hold out. Late that second morning, a few Nez Perce horsemen even drove several hundred ponies through the soldier lines in an attempt to cause confusion and disrupt the effectiveness of their fire, perhaps even hoping to stampede the pack animals.

  Although the warriors’ valiant effort failed and they had already been forced back from the spring where they had caused so many soldier casualties the day before, for some reason the Nez Perce steadfastly persisted on the fringes of the battlefield. Here, then there, they made a rude, noisy appearance on his front. Small groups of them would ride up behind some low elevation in the rolling prairie, leap off their ponies, then quickly fire a few rounds at a weak spot in the soldier line before flinging themselves back atop their horses and racing out of sight. More of them crept forward on their bellies, snaking through the tall grass until within rifle range, whereupon they put their weapons to deadly use—proving just what marksmen they were with those Springfields taken from the White Bird and Rains massacre dead. Some of the more resourceful ones even tied clumps of grass to their heads to better conceal themselves as they made their approach.

  And so that morning and early afternoon passed while each side sought desperately to make the jump on the other, wheedling at every little advantage, but with neither the enemy nor Howard’s men making any real progress beyond where the lines had remained for the last eight hours.

  That was the end of Howard’s patience.

  Just before two o’clock, the general called Captain Marcus Miller back to headquarters, where he detailed orders for a daring charge. “Colonel, I’m withdrawing your artillerymen from the line and filling that gap with some thinly spread cavalry and infantry,” Howard explained.

  From his lips the captain tore the short-stemmed pipe he always had clamped between his teeth. “Where are you sending us, sir?”

  “You will move your line directly toward the bluff. Your objective will be that shallow ravine I believe is holding most of the warriors. One of the howitzers will be in support.”

  “Support, General?”

  “Lieutenant Otis will be in charge of laying down a harassing fire with the twelve-pounder, to loosen things up in there before your advance; then your men will sweep around the left end of the Nez Perce to take them in the rear.”

  “Very good, sir,” Miller replied, enthused. “With your permission, I’ll go begin my withdrawal from the line so we can prepare for our attack.”

  Howard was squinting into the bright sunlight, watching the right of his line where Rodney’s and Trimble’s men were deployed, when Lieutenant Wilkinson came huffing up on foot.

  “General!” the young officer gasped. “Look there—in the distance, sir!”

  Otis quickly put the field glasses to his eyes and adjusted the focus. Beneath that low dust cloud clinging to the ridge-line far to their south he could begin to make out the approach of a blue column.

  “Who are they, General?” asked Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood as he came to Howard’s elbow.

  “That can only be Jackson’s cavalrymen,” he answered, dread filling him, “bringing in the pack train from Lapwai—”

  At the very moment he was about to drop the field glasses from his eyes, something off to the right hooked his attention. His heart sank with the sight.

  The enemy had spotted Jackson’s company. Howard knew B Troop, First U. S. Cavalry, likely had a complement of no more than forty men along to guard that 120-mule pack train that had been expected to reach his column days ago. The Nez Perce would scatter Jackson’s mules and create havoc among the troopers at best. At worst, the warriors would tear through the pack train as they butchered Jackson’s undermanned escort.

  “Colonel Miller!” he roared, using the officer’s brevet rank.

  The officer jerked to a halt and turned on his heel as Howard realized just how unusual it was that any of his officers ever heard him raise his voice, much less bellow like that.

  Leading his horse, Miller returned. “Sir?”

  “Your orders have changed, Colonel,” Howard said, shoving the field glasses toward the officer. “Have yourself a look.”

  As Miller studied that distant detachment advancing beneath the dust cloud, able to see how the warriors were growing agitated with the escort’s approach, Howard said, “Your battalion has my orders to do all that’s necessary to keep the enemy off that pack train. See that Captain Jackson’s men reach the safety of our lines.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Within minutes Miller was extending his forces to the left of the line, by company-front formation, moving A, D, E, and G Batteries of his Fourth Artillery toward the ridge a mile from Howard’s compound—then two miles—continually keeping themselves between the warriors and the heading that oncoming pack train was taking. The Nez Perce horsemen made a few showy, but ineffectual, charges along Miller’s flanks but never got close enough to actually engage the foot soldiers pressing ever on to rendezvous with Jackson’s escort.

  Howard promptly ordered Rodney’s cavalrymen toward the left side of their line, to be in position to act as reserves, should Miller require assistance.

  It was nearing 3:00 P.M. by the time the pack train neared Howard’s lines, with Miller’s battalion arrayed entirely on Jackson’s left flank. When he had his batteries opposite the end of the jagged ravine along the southern side of the battlefield, the captain gave his order.

  “Men!” he roared above the cries of the oncoming warriors and their horses. “Get up and go for them! If we don’t do something now, they’ll likely kill us all!”

  With startling speed, Miller wheeled his artillerymen by the left flank and, as a whole, they bolted into a ragged sprint, racing impetuously for the surprised warriors in the ravine.

  As the pack mules and their escort rattled inside Howard’s lines, the general immediately threw Captain Rodney’s reserves into motion, ordered against the left flank of what would momentarily be a noisy collision.

  Just as Howard had gambled, Nez Perce horsemen burst from the ravine, streaming along Miller’s front, racing for the soldiers’ left, where it was plain they intended to flank those four batteries of artillerymen. But the instant they swept around the back of Miller’s artillerymen, the warriors ran right into Rodney’s horse soldiers! As the general watched, all but breathless for those few desperate minutes, it seemed the Nez Perce flung every one of their men against that end of his line, attempting to roll it up just as they had done to Perry’s battalion at the White Bird.

  A fierce, swirling skirmish raised a boiling dust cloud that swallowed both soldier and Indian in the stinging heat of that midafternoon. Moment by moment, the Nez Perce made a most valiant resistance to check Miller’s charge, attempting to angle back on Miller’s rear when they were caught by surprise between the two forces. Rodney’s men had outflanked the flankers and were just beginning to roll up the end of the
Nez Perce line when … when—the enemy broke!

  Only a few horsemen at first. Soon more. Eventually the rest as their entire line gave way, with both Miller’s and Rodney’s outfits advancing into the onslaught, right on the warriors’ tails. Those few who held to the bitter end waited until the soldiers were no farther than twenty yards before they wheeled about and fled.

  “To the river!” began the cry from those soldiers experiencing their first success. “To the river!”

  Otis knew he must not let Joseph and his warriors escape.

  “Captain Winters!” Howard bawled, knowing he had but moments to capitalize on this fracture just opening in the enemy’s defenses. “Take two companies of infantry and your dismounted cavalrymen and reinforce Miller! On the double, man! On the double now!”

  With Winters on his way toward the retreating tribesmen, Howard next ordered up Jackson’s dismounted B Company—weary from its escort duty—to join Trimble’s H and advance in double time to support one of the Gatling guns and both howitzers to the edge of the bluff, where the gun crews were to open up a hot fire on the fleeing warriors.

  By Jupiter! If this didn’t feel a great deal better than had that news of Perry’s defeat on the White Bird, than the mucking around back and forth across the Salmon, not to mention those Cottonwood fiascos!

  With Joseph on the run now—maybe … just maybe, he could end this war in the next two days, three at the most!

  ARGHGHGH!

  Yellow Wolf hadn’t felt anything like the pain piercing his left wrist!

  The instant that soldier bullet had smacked him earlier that morning, he had flopped onto the ground, slowly swallowing down the waves of pain, gripping the bloody wound tightly in his right hand. For a long time he lay there, unmoving. When he finally did attempt to raise himself so he could lean back against part of the stone barricades, another soldier bullet slapped the boulder near his cheek. A rock chip gouged the flesh just below his left eye.