Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  Here and there soldiers were already dragging their wounded comrades back from the firing lines to a safer place. Trouble was, Gibbon was coming to realize, there wasn’t much of anyplace safe here in the village now. Not with Joseph’s hellions throwing everything they had back against his lines in a fierce concerted counterattack.

  It hit the colonel like a bucket of cold water dashed in his face: He had committed a blunder in not pursuing the enemy on out of the valley, driving them far from their homes.

  From everything he had ever learned of the Sioux and Cheyenne on the northern plains, once soldiers had them on the run from their camp, once the warriors had their women and children on the way, the fighting men would dissolve and disappear.

  Not so these damned Nez Perce. They weren’t about to merely cover the retreat of their families, then pull back and disappear themselves. These warriors appeared determined to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, which Colonel John Gibbon had planned to snap shut on them at dawn. Measured by every axiom and theory taught at the U. S. Military Academy, these unlettered stone-age warriors had turned the tables and were now getting the best of his classically trained officers.

  Where was that damned howitzer?

  He whirled to the left in frustration and anger, looking most longingly toward the side of the hill where the path out of the timber had carried his units down to this valley. That gun crew should have had the howitzer here by now!

  “Lieutenant!” he cried.

  Woodruff trotted over to the edge of the cutbank. “General—your leg, it’s better?”

  “Forget the damned leg,” he growled. “Pass the word among the officers. We’ve got to begin a retreat. Get me Captain Rawn—”

  “R-retreat, sir?”

  “To that point of timber, across the creek—there!” he said as he pointed. “Rawn’s company will lead the file. I tried to hold them in reserve as long as possible, so I Company will form a skirmish line they will hold long enough to get the rest of us through to the hillside. Remind every one of the officers that all dead and wounded must go with us.”

  “Of course, sir! All dead and wounded.”

  “Let’s make this orderly, Mr. Woodruff. Impress that upon Captain Rawn and the other officers. Orderly. We don’t want this to become a …,” and Gibbon paused, having started to say the word rout, but instead he finished by declaring, “We want to assure we hold on to our victory we’ve won here.”

  FOR as long as they could, the young men around Yellow Wolf and Kowtpliks made a furious struggle of it, throwing themselves against the soldiers who were attempting to tear down and burn the lodges.

  A woman screamed behind the warriors, a terrified mother—shrieking that she had left her five children beneath buffalo robes in that lodge the suapies had just set on fire. Her little ones were being consumed by the flames and there was no way for the men to drive back the soldiers, to get anywhere close to that lodge as the smoke turned black and curled upward in the heavy, damp air. From inside that lodge Yellow Wolf heard the pitiful screams of the helpless ones over the rattle of gunfire.

  He vowed to kill as many of these monsters as he could this day, to avenge this terrible, tragic war being made on the women and children.

  First one soldier, then a second, and finally a third went down before Yellow Wolf’s accuracy with that rifle. Each time he pulled the trigger, he saw a white enemy fall. And when he could, he hurried in to seize the dead man’s gun, freeing the cartridge belt from his waist. He passed them and the soldier weapons on to warriors who had no firearms of their own. One by one, those rifles were turned against the Shadows and soldiers. It was for the lives of the women and children that the warriors were fighting, throwing the battle back into the faces of the enemy.

  If the Nee-Me-Poo were whipped in this fight, it was better to die in the struggle than live on in bondage with freedom gone.

  “Look at them now!” Five Wounds roared.

  “They are running away from us!” Yellow Wolf shouted in glee as they all leaped to their feet and started rushing after the escaping soldiers.

  Many of the white men stumbled in the brush, bumping into each other, tripping over their own feet as they rushed out of the village, down into the creek, then slogged up the other side into the bogs and mire of the slough, desperate to reach that point of timber angling down from the western slope. It was as if the whites refused to put up much resistance—all of them become creatures to be herded by the Nez Perce rushing up from behind.

  Upon reaching an open space among the tall willows, Yellow Wolf spotted a lone soldier no more than a few steps away. No one else had spotted that soldier who was moving almost too cautiously, perhaps slowed down by the thick brush or the muddy, foot-sucking mire of the slough.

  The suapie was so intent on escape that he had not noticed Yellow Wolf, so the warrior decided he would touch this soldier while he lived—a great feat of battle courage.

  But suddenly—the soldier must have somehow felt Yellow Wolf directly behind him, because the white man whirled without warning, hoisting his gun up to fire. But Yellow Wolf fired first, knocking the soldier down. He did not move as Yellow Wolf came up to stand over him, reloading.

  After waiting a moment for any sign of life, he knelt to take the soldier’s gun, his belt filled with bullets, and a strange knife, too.* Giving the rifle and most of the ammunition away to a warrior who had none, Yellow Wolf followed after the others who were pursuing those fleeing soldiers. But as he came to the creekbank where the stream made a hard turn to the west, he immediately stopped, jerking up his rifle, pointing it at the soldier who stood at the steep bank, staring directly at him.

  But the white man did not fire. He made no movement. No sound of any kind. Ready to pull the trigger, Yellow Wolf advanced cautiously—eventually to realize the soldier was already dead, somehow propped against the bank, standing rigid in death!

  “We have them surrounded in the trees!” Ollokot hollered from above as Yellow Wolf reached the bottom of the hill.

  “They cannot escape?” he asked.

  Red Moccasin Tops shook his head. “Warriors stopped them from above—no way for them to get away now!”

  Yellow Wolf took a deep sigh, then looked across at the village. He said, “I want to go back to the camp for a while—to see what they did to our homes.”

  “This is a good thing,” Five Wounds said, a grim sadness surrounding him. “When you come back, you tell me what the soldiers have done to our village.”

  Halfway down to the camp, Yellow Wolf had just emerged from a thick stand of willow when he happened upon the body of a soldier sprawled in the damp grass near the creek bank. Here was another rifle and more cartridges, too!

  But as he knelt down to retrieve the weapon off the ground, the soldier came back to life—jerking up an arm, swiping the point of a knife just past the end of Yellow Wolf’s nose. As the warrior lunged backward, out of the way of the blade, he dropped his carbine and instinctively lashed out with the kopluts that hung from his wrist. In a loud, resounding crack, he connected against the man’s head—sending his soldier hat sailing.

  Pouncing on the suapie, Yellow Wolf finished him off with the man’s own knife, the blade that had almost taken off his nose. As he caught his breath there beside the dead man, the warrior noticed another soldier lying in some brush nearby. His eyes were closed—so Yellow Wolf was concerned that this one was also feigning death.

  The warrior poked and prodded the body with the muzzle of his rifle to assure himself the soldier was fully unconscious. After digging around in the man’s pockets, the warrior opened a leather pouch strapped over the white man’s shoulder, finding inside a little of the hard, crunchy bread and some greasy bacon, too. He would take it to eat for his lunch later on that morning. While he thought he should finish off the wounded soldier, Yellow Wolf nonetheless left the man alone and continued on into camp. It was plain from the chest wounds that the soldier couldn’t live for much long
er.

  “Kill him!” came the shouts from a chorus of throats just beyond a cluster of lodges as Yellow Wolf approached.

  He hurried to the scene, where many angry people shoved tightly around Looking Glass and Rattle on Blanket, who together held the arms of a captured Shadow, who, from his clothing, was certainly one of the Bitterroot valley settlers.*

  “No!” Looking Glass snapped at the angry crowd as Yellow Wolf shouldered his way to the front of the ring. “Stay back and he will tell us some news!”

  “This one was playing dead so he could sneak away!” a woman cried out in anger.

  Looking Glass shouted back, “So for being a coward he should die?”

  All around them in that smoky village arose the wails of grief mingled with cries of horror, fury, and revenge. It was clear why most in that group wanted to kill this prisoner, now that they had time to extract some exquisite torture from their victim.

  “Get him to tell us some news from the army,” Looking Glass demanded of Rattle on Blanket. “These soldiers who have followed us here from Idaho country.”

  After exchanging some Shadow words back and forth, the warrior turned to Looking Glass and said, “This one says these are not Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They came from this Montana country, like Ollokot believed,” Rattle on Blanket explained. “This Shadow tells me news of Cut-Off Arm: that he is following behind us very swiftly. Perhaps even to be here by this afternoon so his soldiers can continue the attack on our camp.”

  That brought a great and anguished wail from the crowd of women and old men, every person fearful of even more destruction and death.

  “We must leave in a hurry!” a woman yelled. “Get away before Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers catch us again.”

  “Looking Glass!” someone accused bitterly. “I thought you told us we would be safe when we left Cut-Off Arm and his soldiers back in Idaho!”

  Another angry woman snarled, “Yes, Looking Glass—you said the war was over when we came here to Montana!”

  “Look at us now!” screamed a third. “You said we would be safe here—the war over for us—so you forced us to stay in this camp when so many of us wanted to hurry away!”

  An old man shrieked at Looking Glass, “Yes—many of us wanted to hurry away, but you would not let us!”

  “We still can go to the buffalo country,” Looking Glass proposed. “We must gather up all that we have and start out today—”

  “This Shadow says there are more Montana settlers waiting for us between here and the buffalo country,” Rattle on Blanket interrupted suddenly. “He says the settlers from the mining towns are coming to attack us before we can reach the land of the E-sue-gha.”

  “So we will reach the land of the buffalo by another trail,” Looking Glass promised, his eyes darting about anxiously like those of a man distrustful of those pressing in around him. “Make another trail of our own if the Shadows try to block us from joining up with our friends.”

  Rattle on Blanket asked, “What do we do with this one when we leave this camp?”

  “Take this Shadow to my lodge,” Looking Glass ordered. “I’ll keep him there until I want to dig more news out of him.”

  With both of the prisoner’s arms pinned behind him, Rattle on Blanket started the Shadow across the middle of camp. They hadn’t gone but a few steps when out of the crowd lunged a woman who stopped them, raising her loud, shrill voice to Looking Glass in complaint.

  “Why do you let this Shadow live anymore?” she demanded, jabbing a finger at the chief. “He’s told you all he is worth! My brother is already dead by the hands of these strangers. And I watched my children die when the white men set fire to my lodge! Let me kill him myself!”

  With that last word of hers, the woman reached up and slapped the Shadow across the face, so hard it immediately raised a bright red mark on his cheek, clearly visible even though the man had not shaved in several days.

  His lip curled in instant fury. With his arms pinned behind him, the Shadow lashed out at that woman the only way he could, kicking her savagely in the leg with his muddy boot. She crumpled to the ground, clutching her shin and crying in pain as a warrior jumped from the crowd, shoving his gun against the white man’s chest, and pulled the trigger. It was Yellow Wolf’s cousin Otskai.

  “Why did you kill him?” Rattle on Blanket shrieked as his prisoner crumpled to the ground at his feet.

  “We can’t waste time-—we must kill him,” Otskai sneered, a big and powerfully muscular man. “No use to keep him alive. The difference is, had he been a woman, we would have saved him. Sent him home unhurt. Are not warriors to be fought and killed? Look around you! These babies, our children are killed! Were they warriors? These young girls, these young women you see dead all around you. Were these young boys, these old men, were they warriors?”

  “They were not warriors” Rattle on Blanket replied. “But does it make you brave to kill an unarmed man?”

  “We are the warriors!” Otskai snorted with scorn. “But these Shadows are not brave men—coming on us while we slept in our beds! And once we had a few rifles in our hands, these cowardly Shadows ran away to the hillside!”

  “So must we become as evil as these white men?” Yellow Wolf demanded of his taller cousin.

  Whereupon Otskai whirled on him, snarling, “My brother, tell me if these Shadows who came with the soldiers are our good friends from the Bitterroot? See how they traded with us for our gold—then sneaked behind us with the soldiers to rub us out. Our promise given in the Bitterroot was good and honorable … while their Lolo treaty was a lie made with two tongues! Why should any of us waste time saving this Shadow’s life?”

  The more Yellow Wolf thought about it, the more he found he could not argue with his cousin. Even though Otskai was impulsive and was well known to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, he could never be faulted for his bravery. He never hid from a fight.

  At first Yellow Wolf had believed Otskai’s act one of crude and bloody impulsiveness, thinking Looking Glass was right—that the Shadow might have told them a little more news about how that “day after tomorrow soldier chief,” Cut-Off Arm, was following closely on their heels now.

  But the more Yellow Wolf considered it … maybe they had already heard everything they needed to know to save themselves.

  * Later determined to be the soldier’s Rice or trowel bayonet, which hung from the belt in a leather scabbard.

  *As best as historians can ascertain, this was Campbell Mitchell, civilian volunteer from Corvallis, Montana.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  AUGUST 9, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  THE INDIANS.

  —

  More About the Indians.

  HELENA, August 8.—W. J. McCormick, of Missoula, writes to Governor Potts on the 6th, as follows: A courier arrived from Howard at 6 o’clock this evening. He left Howard Saturday morning last; thinks Howard will camp near the summit between the Lolo and Clear-water to-night. He is distant about fifty miles from the mouth of the Lolo. The courier reports that Joseph, with over one-half of the fighting force has gone to the head of the Bitter-Root valley by the Elk City trail, and will form a junction with Looking Glass and White Bird near Ross Hole. He says Howard has 750 men, and 450 pack mules, and is moving forward as rapidly as possible. Advices from the upper Bitter-Root say the Indians will camp to-night in Ross Hole. Gibbon is following rapidly. Other advices say the Indians were still at Doolittle’s sixteen miles above Corvallis, and Gibbon expects to strike them on the morning of the 7th, before they break camp. Couriers say the hostiles have Mrs. Manuel with them as the property of a petty chief called Cucasenilo. Her sad story is familiar.

  JOINING THOSE FIRST SOLDIERS AND CATLIN’S VOLUNTEERS in flight, Henry Buck scrambled toward the point of timber that stretched down from the western slopes in a narrowing V, a small flat-topped promontory that jutted out from the mountainsi
de, terminating just above the boggy slough they had struggled across in their retreat.

  The Nez Perce horse herd was already gone—successfully driven off by a few mounted warriors. Which meant Gibbon had failed to put the hostiles afoot.

  And now it looked damned good the army wouldn’t end up destroying the village, either. While many of the lodgepole cones had been pulled over, only eight of the damp covers smoldered back there in the enemy camp.

  Neither of those failures would have caused a man great consternation, at least to Buck’s way of thinking. Henry was certain there wasn’t a soldier or a civilian who would fault Gibbon for failing to capture the herd or to hold onto the village long enough to destroy the hostiles’ homes and possessions. Not with the way the Nez Perce had surprised every last one of them by striking back with such fury.

  So what stuck in Henry’s craw so bad was the fact that Gibbon didn’t make sure the warriors would give up when they were attacked.

  As bullets hissed and whined about the retreating white men like acorns falling on a shake roof in autumn winds—smacking tree limbs and knocking leaves off the surrounding willow, even digging furrows into the ground at their feet or where they planted their hands whenever they stumbled in their race—it was plain as the sun rising at their backs that the Nez Perce had no intention of scooping up their survivors and fleeing the valley.

  Isn’t that what Indians are supposed to do? his mind burned with the question. To run away when attacked?

  These… these red bastards aren’t about to give up!

  There was a good number of the warriors already on the slope, positioned in the timber, by the time the soldiers started clearing out of the village. That meant the whole of Gibbon’s command suddenly found itself caught in a hot little cross fire, strung out in the bottomground between those warriors pushing out of the encampment itself and those warriors tidily ensconced on the western slope above the creek.