Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  But now it was only a matter of time until they all would be dead, he decided. Cursing the spirits for this terrible fate: forced to lie pinned to the spot, unable to move, watching as his wife and young son died before his eyes, just beyond his reach. Unable to respond to the boy’s calls, to drag his wife to some safe place to die … unable to give back hurt for hurt against these soldiers who had come to retake their honey-haired woman and punish the Nee-Me-Poo once and for all.

  A hard lesson, this pain of watching his family die right before his eyes.

  “CLEAR that goddamn tepee, Private!”

  Young Charles Alberts nodded and gulped his reply. “Yes, sir, Sergeant!”

  Captain Logan’s A Company was spreading out through the south end of the village now, having started to push the Nez Perce out of their lodges after a little trouble stabbing into the camp at first, seeing how the captain was knocked off his feet and killed. But Sergeants John Raferty and Patrick Rogan were taking a few of the men off the firing line as the resistance slowed, sending a few of the privates here and there to check the tepees for any of the enemy who might be hiding inside and capable of doing some sniping.

  It was dangerous work, but this San Francisco-born soldier never had been one to shy away from anything that smacked of danger.

  Flicking open the trapdoor on his Springfield, the private assured himself that he had a live round in the chamber before he clicked it shut again and pulled the hammer back to full-cock. With the weapon braced against his hip, ready to fire, Alberts stopped just to the side of the loose hide suspended over the tepee door. Using the muzzle of his rifle, the private pushed the door flap away from him, staying well to the side in case one of the occupants fired a weapon at him.

  He counted slowly to ten, then snatched a quick peek inside before he jerked his head back again. Not good to give them a target to aim at, he thought. After another quick look into the darkened interior, he felt ready to dive inside himself. In a squat, Alberts stepped through the doorway, stopping immediately inside to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dim light—

  Black shadows suddenly tore themselves out of the darkened interior, streaking his way. Two, then three, then more than five of them. Women and children all. His wide, frightened eyes instantly raked them to see if there was a warrior in their number, remembering that Colonel Gibbon had given orders to kill just warriors—women and children only when it was unavoidable. But later on in the dark as they had waited out those last hours before launching this attack, word quietly filtered through the units that Gibbon really had no use for any prisoners.

  “You fellas know what to do,” Sergeant John Raferty told A Company. “When the time comes, the general’s counting on you boys all knowing what to do for captives.”

  Screaming, shrieking, making the hair rise at the back of his neck—the women and children clambered toward him in that heartbeat.

  Alberts lurched back, his head and shoulders bumping against the low top of the doorway as he reversed the Springfield in his hands—intending to use it as a club. Even though he was a good soldier who obeyed orders and knew what to do when it came to taking women and children prisoner … the private nonetheless would do everything short of giving up his own life to keep from killing one of these innocents.

  “None of ’em innocent,” an older soldier had grumbled in the darkness just before it got gray enough to move into their final positions. “Squaws and nits—they’ll all gut you soon as look at you. Taught that right from the day they was whelped. Ain’t no different than the bucks that way. You watch out for ’em, sonny—or they’ll slip a knife atween your ribs!”

  Before Alberts knew it he was swingings that rifle left and right, back and forth, in a panic, smacking wrists and whacking elbows—knocking their knives and axes out of the way as he stumbled backward through the doorway with the ferocity of their attack.

  Kicking out with one boot, he freed his leg from a child attempting to hold him while the women and other children finished his execution. A woman flopped backward, senseless, when his rifle butt collided against her skull. That only emboldened the other two women and the last three children.

  Alberts spilled backward, tripping at the lodge door. Dragging up the Springfield where he lay on his back, he pointed it at the open doorway, ready to fire at the first one of them who came vaulting out with a weapon in her hand.

  But for the first heartbeat no one burst from the darkness. Two, then three more heartbeats—not one of his attackers showed her face.

  Quickly Private Charles Alberts elbowed his way backward, never taking the muzzle of his rifle from the doorway; then he swallowed hard. Realizing he’d stumbled into a nest of vipers but—for some reason—had just been spared.

  “S-sergeant!” he bellowed for Patrick Rogan, managing to catch his breath. “Gimme a hand for God’s sake! They amost killed me in there!”

  *Isabella Benedict in Cries from the Earth, vol. 14, the Plainsmen series.

  *The Salmon River, where Jennet Manuel and her infant son were kidnapped in the outbreak of the Nez Perce War.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  WA-WA-MAI-KHAL, 1877

  EELAHWEEMAH WAS CALLED ABOUT ASLEEP, NOW IN HIS FIF teenth summer, he was nearing the age when young men began thinking of those rituals that would lead to full manhood.

  Never before in the history of the Nee-Me-Poo had the killing of Shadows and suapies been part of those rituals.

  While part of him was racked with the fright and terror of a child watching the soldier attack on his sleeping camp, another part of him felt the fury of a young warrior throwing himself into battle against the white men who had slithered up on this village, intent upon killing the innocent women and little ones who had never hurt another person in anger.

  “Bring your brother!” his mother had yelled at him just before the three of them squirted from their lodge right behind his father.

  While the man of the family sprinted off to join Ollokot, who stood hollering for others to rally with him near the center of the long, irregular camp, About Asleep’s mother pointed to a nearby group of four women, all nearly naked, who were huddled just beneath the creek’s sharp cutbank, frantically waving at the others to join them.

  “This way!” his mother ordered, unable to pull anything more about her in the instant panic than a leather skirt that she had knotted at her waist. Gripping her oldest son’s elbow in one hand, she dragged About Asleep’s younger brother along by the wrist while the tiny child sobbed in confusion and fear, bullets striking the lodges all about them, splintering poles.

  Together now, the five women and two boys dashed right over the lip of the cutbank and into the shockingly cold water, the leap of each one dispersing a little more of that thick fog clinging to the rippled surface of the creek.

  One of the older women pointed out a different direction, saying, “We must take cover beneath those willow!”

  Without a word of argument, the seven began wading into the deeper part of the creek, struggling over the slippery rocks and hidden holes to reach the west bank where they could hide beneath the lush overhanging branches.

  Just as they were reaching the leafy cover, strange voices speaking the Shadow tongue began crying out both up- and downstream from them. This close to cover, the women did not have a chance to get beneath the long, bobbing branches before three suapies appeared, suddenly parting the brush to stand almost directly above the seven cowering Nee-Me-Poo.

  Unable to comprehend that what he was watching could actually be real, About Asleep saw the first bullet strike the woman beside his mother. She whimpered as if an infant, with that faint cheep of a newborn sage chick when she slipped beneath the water.

  The other four women cried hideously at the sight, both in anger and in panic as they bent to scoop her from the water that swirled in this deep eddy, soaking those who wore any covering to their armpits.

  A second of the soldier guns fired. About Asleep’s own mother jerked,
back arching violently; then she eased down into the water, slowly turning around on the surface, her eyes wide but already lifeless.

  About Asleep shrieked in terror, his younger brother, too, their voices joining those of the three gray-headed women.

  With another gunshot, About Asleep felt the burn along his upper arm, heard the big bullet ploosh into the water beside him.

  “Come on!” he screamed to his brother, waving desperately for the women to follow before he grabbed the youngster with his other hand.

  But the women were not as quick as the youngsters. While About Asleep and his brother lunged out of the water to grab a soldier’s ankle, vainly attempting to upset him, the women were paralyzed in fear.

  The young soldier easily kicked himself free, then wheeled away into the brush, crying for his companions. About Asleep realized the two of them would never have a better chance of escape.

  “Get out of the water!” he ordered his younger brother.

  Dragging himself onto the grassy bank among the thickest growth of the willow, About Asleep reached out and pulled his brother into the brush.

  Four soldiers suddenly burst through the thick vegetation, their rifles already pointing down at the older women in the creek. Even though those women waved their arms and pleaded for mercy, the bullets erupted from the guns in a fury—driving the victims back, back, back until they slipped lifeless beneath the surface turned white with angry foam, tinged red with the blood of their many wounds.

  “Run!” About Asleep shouted at his brother, pushing the youth ahead of him into the leafy brush that whipped and cut and lashed their naked bodies.

  Yet About Asleep did not feel the mere touch of a single branch or suffer the clawing of any of the sharp alder limbs.

  To stay alive, they had to run far, far from this killing place.

  CORPORAL Charles N. Loynes quickly looked left, then right. Every other soldier was too consumed with something else to notice what the young corporal had just witnessed, disbelieving. No one else saw it … so maybe those women weren’t really there.

  Loynes blinked his eyes, rubbed them with the heel of his left hand, and looked again.

  But there they were, four Nez Perce squaws sliding that buffalo robe over their heads once they had slipped over the creek bank and all were in the water.

  Moments ago he had breathlessly watched the four, admiring their courage and amazed at their audacity, as the side of a lodge was split open with a huge butcher knife and the women popped out of that long slit like peas from a crisp pod, dashing for the edge of the stream, one of them dragging a hairy buffalo hide behind her—the sort he knew these Nez Perce curled up in to sleep. Every few seconds Loynes had looked left and right to check if any other soldier in his I Company, even one of the civilians, had spotted what he was watching.

  Somehow the four had managed to dash through the fog and gunsmoke unnoticed by anyone but the corporal, who found himself somehow separated from the rest of his unit at this moment—Captain Rawn’s own company, men who had watched these same Nez Perce skip right around them on the Lolo. They’re a tricky bunch, these Injuns!

  He immediately scolded himself for not inspecting those women more closely. Since both the bucks and squaws wore their unbound hair long and loose, it was hard for him to remember if all of the four truly were women. Maybe there was a fighting man or two among them. Just fine that the women should make a run of it—but if one or more happened to be a warrior with blood on his hands, then Loynes wouldn’t be doing his job as a soldier to clean up this village of rapists, thieves, and murderers. A warrior who would escape death today could well be a warrior who would kill more soldiers, pillage more settler homes, and shame more white women with his evil somewhere on down the line.

  With their buffalo robe unfurled upon the surface of the creek he had lost all chance to tell buck from squaw. But he immediately knew how to get himself a good look at the four: Loynes figured he would shoot at the floating robe while the four started downstream past the middle part of the enemy camp.

  “What the bloody hell you shootin’ at down there, Cawpril?” a voice demanded just after Loynes had pulled the trigger for the first time, standing on the bank overlooking the hide.

  “Look!” he exclaimed as Sergeant Michael Hogan stomped over to his elbow and peered at the creek, too. “Watch that robe—there’s four of ’em under it!”

  “Four?” the sergeant boomed, bringing up his Long-Tom. “Warriors?”

  “I think some of ’em are,” Loynes answered with a swallow, noticing the edge of the robe rising slightly from the surface of the water as if one of the four were peeking out from under the hide. “Lookee there—them bucks is sneaking in a breath of air!”

  “Lemme shoot one of them red bastards when he pops up for a breath,” the sergeant growled, shoving his Springfield into the crook of his shoulder.

  “I get another shot after you, Sarge.”

  One after the other, the two soldiers swapped shots at the floating buffalo hide, their bullets piercing the robe here, then there. One time Loynes caught a glimpse of a hand, another time a cheek, and once he saw an eye peer beneath the dark blot of shadow before the robe was dropped onto the surface again. Inching slowly along the brushy bank, both sergeant and corporal followed the floating robe, reloading while they kept a watchful eye locked on the hide—strangely oblivious to the terrible fight raging behind them in the Nez Perce camp.

  One at a time, the bodies of the Indians they had killed rose to the surface at the edge of the robe, twisted and rolled gently in the current, then bobbed slowly downstream … until there were no more to shoot’ and the hide finally swerved about and became ensnared on some overhanging willow—now that no one controlled its movements.

  “Four more bucks won’t be cutting no shakes no more!” Sergeant Hogan exclaimed, immensely proud of himself.

  Loynes smiled wanly. “Four … four more. That’s right, Sarge.”

  “Won’t be jumping no more white women now, Cawpril.”

  “No, the four bastards gonna feed the coyotes now,” Loynes replied, remembering how that eye had peered out at him.

  Hogan pounded him on the shoulder. “You helped me make ’em good Injuns!”

  The corporal nodded. “Yeah, Sarge. We made all of ’em good Injuns!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  WA-WA-MAI-KHAL, 1877

  STRUCK IN THE HEAD BY A SUAPIE BULLET, HUSIS OWYEEN had no idea how long he had lain there, stunned and unable to move, while more wayward bullets hit both his son and wife near their lodge at the southern end of the village.

  His muscles not heeding his desperate cries, Wounded Head cursed the spirits for dealing him such an agonizing blow as this—not only having to watch his beloved family die right before his eyes but being unable to go help them. Forced to listen to the boy’s whimpers as the child struggled again and again to rise, Wounded Head could see how his son couldn’t roll this way or that because of his broken hips.

  And Wounded Head was forced to watch the way his wife’s hand clawed at the grass at her side for the longest time. It was the only part of her body that moved, all she could do, so badly wounded through the chest was she.

  Slowly, with excruciating discomfort, he sensed feeling beginning to return to his body, an icy tingle eventually creeping down his legs, worming its way out through both arms, until all his limbs finally did as he willed them.

  Wounded Head sat up in the midst of that yelling and gunfire, the hammer of running feet and the whine of bullets.

  “Father!”

  Instantly he knew what he must do.

  Rocking onto his feet unsteadily, running in a lumbering crouch, Wounded Head clambered toward his son. He paused to scoop the boy’s bloody body into his arms, then wheeled about and made for a patch of thick willow on the creekbank. Inside that modest cover, he laid his son upon the ground.

  “I’m going back for your mother” And he touched his son’s cheek, his fingert
ips wet with the boy’s blood.

  The moment he reached Penahwenonmi’s side, Wounded Head stretched out upon the ground beside her—the better to appear wounded or dead himself. Carefully he reached out and rolled Helping Another onto her back. A flood of relief washed through him when his wife’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Th-the boy?”

  “He should live,” Wounded Head whispered.

  “Take good care of him … always,” she said in a raspy voice pierced with much pain.

  “I’m taking you to him now,” he vowed.

  “No!” she whimpered, tears bubbling from her clenched eyelids. “It hurts too much.”

  “If I leave you here, surely you will die,” he said with a touch of anger at her refusal. “Or the soldiers will find and kill you, maybe even shame you with their lusts before they put a bullet in your head.”

  Only her eyes moved as she peered at him, each of them with a cheek resting on the ground, their faces only inches apart, noticing his head wound. “You are hurt, too.”

  “I’m taking you now,” he said suddenly, scrambling up to a kneeling position, looping his hands beneath her shoulders, and gripping her armpits.

  Whirling her around despite her shrill wail of pain, Wounded Head started backward in an ungainly wobble, making for the brush where he had secreted their son. All around them, on both sides of the creek, the booming of guns and the shouts of fighting men failed to drown out the screeching of those terrified women and children who were unable to escape the village before the soldiers were upon them.

  Not far to his left stood the maternity lodge.

  Wounded Head wondered if any young mother would still be in there, if one of the aged midwives remained with her. Forced by nature to be giving birth at this hour of travail and horror. It could not be a good omen for the child.