Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  Temporarily blinded, he collapsed back into the grass, listening to the increased fury of the suapie volleys sent hurling into the timber at the ravine. His cheek felt damp, warm. Yellow Wolf touched it. Blood, streaming down his face from the flesh wound. Closing his right eye momentarily, he realized he couldn’t see from the left. He closed them both and worried how this fight would end now.

  At dawn, there hadn’t been enough warriors to blunt the soldiers’ daring charge on the spring. No more than five-times-ten stayed with Ollokot now. The rest had long ago retreated back to the village for the night or still slept safely in the smokers’ lodge where they held long discussions on what path this struggle should take. Some of the chiefs and older warriors had wanted this to be the last fight against the suapies—either defeating the white men in a decisive and pitched battle or being destroyed by Cut-Off Arm. But others still argued for retreat and flight. Looking Glass talked ever stronger about a new life for their people across the mountains.

  It turned Yellow Wolf’s sour stomach into knots when he thought of so many of fighting age electing not to put their bodies in the struggle … while a young man like Eelahweeman, called About Asleep—just in his fourteenth summer—bravely carried water up to the hot, thirsty warriors fighting on the ridge top all that first afternoon and again into this second.

  Red Thunder was the only brave fighter killed yesterday, shot from his horse during that fierce charge against the mule train as the battle was opened. But it was in that brushy ravine around the spring early this morning that the Nee-Me-Poo suffered their heaviest losses. Two veteran warriors gave their lives. Wayakat, called Going Across, was killed instantly, and Yoomstis Kunnin, known as Grizzly Bear Blanket, received a mortal wound. In addition, Howwallits, the one called Mean Man, suffered a slight wound before the warriors were driven back from the water hole.

  With things turning out badly as that second day of fighting progressed, the chiefs were already arguing among themselves. Ollokot and Toohoolhoolzote, Rainbow and Five Wounds, Two Moons and Sun Necklace—too many of their fighting men had refused to add their bodies to this fight. Some had hung back in the village to guard the women and children, but more had simply not advanced to the front to join the fighters. They had tarried at the smoking lodge, safe from the sting of soldier bullets. By the time some of those men on the far right of their defenses spotted the approaching dust cloud, they had been fighting for much of two days. Ollokot called for volunteers to follow him as he cut off the arriving Shadows and their long pack train, then rode off to make his noisy charge.

  That’s when everything went into a blur for Yellow Wolf. Both sides were shooting more furiously as they collided far to the right along the edge of the ridge. In minutes the dust cloud over that part of the fight started rolling in Yellow Wolf’s direction. It didn’t take him long before he realized why the soldiers were coming on so quickly. There were few warriors to oppose them!

  Looking this way and that, he found himself all but alone on this far side of the ravine, where the fighting men were suddenly scrambling to their ponies, pitching them on down the draw for the river below—the suapies right on their heels. Glancing a moment into the valley, Yellow Wolf worried about his mother, wondering if she were among those now streaming up the Cottonwood, leaving behind most of their lodgepoles and camp equipment.

  Enimkinikai!

  Curses to the war chiefs for denying Joseph the opportunity to dismantle the village yesterday! A thousand curses for not allowing the Wallowa leader time to have the women prepare to move the village in an orderly retreat rather than this sudden, shocking, and uncoordinated flight—like that of a half-thousand mud sparrows before the night owls’ warning screech. Instead of taking all that they owned and slipping away while the warriors had done battle with Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers … now the families were forced to scramble for their lives, able to take only part of what they owned as they drove their huge pony herds up the steep hillsides west of the South Fork and onto the Camas Prairie once more.

  “Nobody here!”

  Yellow Wolf heard the voice cry out in his tongue. “Who is that?” he asked.

  “Wottolen,” the disembodied voice replied. “Is that Yellow Wolf?”

  “Yes—I thought I was alone!”

  “We are. There are but a few of us left now!” Wottolen bellowed as he burst into view, leading his pony through the trees. He leaped onto its back and wrenched the animal toward the head of the ravine. “Come, Yellow Wolf! It is time to quit!”

  He started running on foot, following the older warrior—then suddenly remembered his pony, where he had tied it. Yellow Wolf raced for the tree, relieved to find the animal, and lunged onto its back, doing his best to clutch the reins and his rifle both with his right hand. Down, down, down he put it in motion, flying faster and faster down the ravine toward the river. Cutting left as he reached the valley, the young warrior dashed for the ford. Into the river, each lunging step took him closer and closer to the abandoned village. Up the far bank and into the empty camp.

  The first boom of the cannon echoed overhead. Then the shrill whistle of the ball, closer and closer. That shell crashed through an abandoned lodge and exploded in a fury of dirt, flying lodgepoles, and smoke.

  As the deafening roar faded, his ears caught the pitiful sound of a woman’s cries. The whinny of a frightened horse.

  Another boom rattled the valley. He whirled to look at the ridge top, mesmerized by the whining hiss of the oncoming cannonball. It whistled overhead into a patch of ground just beyond the lodges, tearing into their race ground with a loud, dusty explosion that hurtled clods of earth in a hundred directions.

  As he kicked his pony into motion again, the woman and her crying horse suddenly appeared between the lodges to his right. She fought the pony as it reared, pawed the air, and landed with a bone-jarring jolt, then pranced and reared again, eyes mooning with terror. It was Joseph’s wife, Ta-ma-al-we-non-my, the one known as Driven Before a Cold Storm. Her eyes were just as big as the horse’s when he chattered to a halt beside her. There was no one else left but the two of them.

  “Heinmot!” she shrieked his familial name, White Thunder. “My baby! I am worried about my baby!”

  “Where?”

  “Behind you!”

  He whirled his horse to look, but his attention was immediately riveted on the ravine across the river, seeing how the soldiers had begun their descent right on his heels. Tearing his eyes away, Yellow Wolf spotted Joseph’s newborn in a tekash, its cradle board, propped against a set of bare lodgepoles—where the buffalo-hide cover had been torn away from the graceful spiral of poles. Laying his rifle across the crook of his left elbow and stuffing the reins between his teeth, Yellow Wolf leaned over and seized the top of the tekash in his strong hand.

  By the time he was bringing the pony around, the woman’s horse had settled. She laughed with such unbounded joy as he handed her that bawling child lashed in its cradle board, a daughter, who had been born just as this war ignited against the Shadows.

  He ripped the reins from his teeth. “Where is your husband?”

  She looked up from the baby’s face, saying, “He went ahead, leading the village away to safety as he has done since we left that last happy camp at Tepahlewam. I am sure he did not know I would be the last one here with his daughter,” her words came breathlessly. “He could not have left us here if he had known. Joseph must think I am the head of the march with the other women and children—”

  “Your husband has done what only a great chief would do, woman,” Yellow Wolf reminded her. “His duty was to see all the rest of our camp to safety, before seeing only to his own family.”

  As they brought their ponies around and started away, she dropped her eyes a moment, saying, “For many days now, since the war on us started, my heart wanted Joseph to be something more than a camp chief. Sometimes … I secretly hoped he would become one of the fighting chiefs—”

  She was interru
pted by another loud roar as rocks rained down upon them, limbs from the trees spinning out of the sky.

  Yellow Wolf sighed, looking down at the face of Joseph’s daughter in that tekash. Then he said, “Your husband, our leader, he has always done what he thought best to protect his people—taking charge of the old men, the women and little ones, a sacred duty. I am proud to be part of his family,” Yellow Wolf admitted.

  She looked at him kindly as their ponies began to clamber into the Cottonwood canyon. “And Joseph is proud of you.”

  “Your husband, our chief, I have come to think of him as a better warrior than those loud-talkers in the smoking lodge, or those like Looking Glass who slip back to the village.” Quickly glancing over his shoulder at the ruins of the village they were leaving behind, Yellow Wolf added, “Joseph is a man who always puts the needs of his people before his own. The same way our warrior chiefs put themselves between our camps and the enemy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  JULY 12, 1877

  “BOOTS AND SADDLES!” THE SERGEANT BAWLED AT HIS MEN. “Boots and Saddles, you godblessit weeds!”

  First Sergeant Michael McCarthy hurled his slim frame atop his horse without using the stirrup and yanked back on the reins, immediately bringing the frightened sidestepping horse under control.

  Parnell was among them an instant later, Captain Trimble seated on his mount, waiting off to the side as H Troop shuffled into ranks with the other cavalry troops. The mustachioed veteran of the Crimean War bellowed, “On the double, Sergeant! For-r-r-rad!”

  With a yelp of his own, McCarthy flung his arm forward, leading them out in a lope after those fleeing warriors skidding, slipping, sailing ass over teakettle down the ravine hundreds of yards ahead of them. But almost as suddenly Parnell hurled his arm upward, halting the column as McCarthy bolted up beside him. He came to a halt beside the large officer, staring down in amazement at the body of a dead Indian—nothing less than gigantic in stature.

  “Take a good look at that, you Irishman,” declared the lieutenant with the growl of a dog suddenly released from its chain.

  The sergeant’s eyes poured over the stone breastworks. “Easy to see why we wasn’t turning many of ’em into good Injuns this day,” McCarthy lamented.

  He quickly regarded the tall stacks of rock piled up by the Indians, most of the formations high enough for a man to stand behind as he sniped at the army lines. Many of the stacks even had willow branches poking from their tops—put there so the warriors and their weapons would be concealed from the soldiers.

  Of a sudden, behind H Troop arose the noise of a broad front of approaching horsemen. Parnell kicked his horse, ordering, “Let’s get this company down to the river!”

  At the east bank of the South Fork both Trimble’s company and Whipple’s men held up, waiting momentarily until Captain David Perry, commander of the cavalry battalion, raced up to the advance and gave the order for those two companies to ford the stream then and there. Like so many of the men milling on the bank, McCarthy, heart pounding, was barely able to wait before crossing in pursuit of the fleeing village, at long last wiping away the stain of the White Bird debacle. Revenge was within reach—

  “Cross and hold the village!” Perry declared, his horse backing slightly under the anxiety of its rider.

  “H-hold the village, Colonel?” Trimble asked.

  Perry glared at the captain, his nemesis from the White Bird Canyon debacle. “Yes. Hold the village.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel,” Parnell pleaded. “We ain’t never gonna get another chance like this’un to follow up them buggers and tear apart their retreat!”

  Perry’s withering gaze suddenly pinned Parnell to his saddle. “Your captain has his orders to cross and hold against possible attack, Lieutenant.”

  Good soldier that he was, Parnell snapped a salute. “Very good, Colonel!”

  As Perry ordered, both cavalry companies crossed right there, plunging into the deep, cold water without going in search of a shallow ford. As McCarthy brought his shuddering horse under control, lunging onto the far bank as it flung water from its hide, he glanced up and spotted the last two riders escaping to the top of the far hill just beyond the village. One of the pair carried something bulky in his arms while the other turned to glance over his shoulder before disappearing from sight—

  “There’s some of ’em still in that creek bottom!” a trooper cried.

  McCarthy wheeled his horse, catching the blur of motion as a dozen or more of the warriors took up positions in the trees along Cottonwood Creek, northwest of the village. With the warning, Perry quickly ordered three companies forward at a walk, slowly advancing on the creek, driving the Nez Perce back into the timber. But his charge was so cautious and dilatory that it was plain, even to General Howard, who was crossing the Clearwater at that moment, David Perry never again had any intention of pitching into an enemy so close at hand.

  With Jackson’s B Troop recalled to the riverbank, Trimble and Whipple deployed their troopers, spreading them on a wide skirmishers’ front before they cautiously entered the camp on horseback after warning their men of snipers. The fragrance of cooking meat made McCarthy’s mouth water. For more than thirty-six hours Howard’s army hadn’t eaten anything but bread and spring water. But here, on one fire after another, kettles simmered or meal broiled over low flames—supper already started for the fighting men.

  On the far side of the village where both companies were halted and dismounted—with horse holders sent to the rear—the troopers established a skirmish line in the event the enemy decided to double back and make an attack. McCarthy’s H Troop discovered a network of extensive log barricades the Nez Perce had constructed. It clearly showed how the war chiefs believed attack would come from that western side of their camp facing the Camas Prairie.

  Within minutes the first of the infantry were reaching the far bank, where Jackson’s troop was assigned to transport the foot soldiers across the river, riding double on the backs of their horses, then turning around to take up another soldier, one after another.

  Already several of the civilians from Mount Idaho and Grangeville and some of the packers were leaping from their horses among the lodges. While some of the men ducked inside to determine what valuables might have been left behind, others yanked the cleaning rods from their rifles and began to probe any likely spot of freshly turned soil.

  “What the hell you poking for?” McCarthy asked one dark-faced citizen.

  “Caches. Where these red niggers buried the stuff they couldn’t take with ’em.”

  Another volunteer came to a stop nearby, his arms loaded with a blanket and brass kettle, along with an assortment of other goods. “Looks to me them Nez Perce figger to come back for their plunder soon.”

  “Soon as they get shet of you army boys,” the first man commented with a snort, “they’ll double round and be back here to dig all this up.”

  One at a time, or by the handfuls, the treasures emerged from those lodges abandoned beside the South Fork of the Clearwater. A beautiful blue silk dress, which, by tying up the sleeves in the right manner, a woman had cleverly fashioned into a bag to hold her camas roots. An old-fashioned hoopskirt had been adorned with beads and feathers, reflecting the new owner’s tastes. Knives and forks, china plates, much more clothing, all the white man’s goods now intermingled with dressed furs, moccasins, feathered headdresses, and more of their dried meat and berries. Some of the packers roared with delight when they ran across jewelry, fine silver tableware, and even small bags filled with gold dust or coins. Ammunition discovered in the lodges indicated many of the warriors were using Henry and Winchester carbines, along with some cartridges for some unknown model of a long-range target or buffalo gun.

  But what caught McCarthy’s attention was a pair of beaded moccasins sewn for a very small child he spotted near the base of a lodge. Right next to them lay some little white girl’s rag doll. At a glance it was easy to see that this
was not a Nez Perce toy. Side by side these discarded items lay, Indian and white together—

  “The general wants it all burned!” Perry shouted as he rode onto the flat, leading some of Howard’s headquarters group as more and more infantrymen were “ferried” across the river all around them.

  “Give us a little time to get through all this goddamned plunder!” one of the citizens pleaded as he dragged a blanket out of a lodge. On it lay a collection of valuables he was determined to save from the fires.

  “Captain Whipple!” Perry shouted. “Give these civilians five more minutes, then put your men to work setting the tepees on fire!”

  On all sides of McCarthy the civilians scrambled like ants on a hill a playful child has stirred with his stick—frantic to pull out everything of any value, claiming it for themselves … or reclaiming that which it was plain had been stolen from the farms along the Salmon or the ranches dotting the Camas Prairie. The spoils of war, Michael thought. The spoils of a mean, dirty little war.

  In reality, most of what he saw was the few earthly possessions left behind by some dead man or woman now mercifully torn from this veil of tears in that first flurry of brutal and senseless murders.

  The sergeant listened as Captain Trimble rode up to Perry, saluted, and asked, “Colonel, when can the men fall out and prepare supper? They haven’t eaten much but coffee and a few bites of bread in more than a day and a half now.”

  “As soon as we have a defensive perimeter established and these lodges burned—just as General Howard ordered,” he replied, watching the east bank as more and more of the command streamed down to the riverside from the plateau above.

  McCarthy’s mouth was already watering, as he thought of the potatoes and bacon back on those pack animals, hot food they could fry up while the coffee was boiling. The first decent meal in days now that they had a firm victory in hand.

  His stomach growled in protest. They’d eat till they could eat no more tonight, then set off in the morning, running those fleeing warrior bands into the ground somewhere on the Camas Prairie.