Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  “You want the soldiers who got away from us?” he asked.

  His uncle nodded. “I think we might find out where those soldiers are running to.”

  “Maybe they will have more bullets for our guns?” Yellow Wolf asked as they caught up their ponies and mounted.

  With a grin, the uncle said, “And if the spirits are smiling on us … we will get ourselves a look at Cut-Off Arm’s soldiers coming up the other side of this mountain.”

  * William L. English, I Company, Seventh U. S. Infantry.

  *Tenahtahkal Weyun (Dropping from a Cliff), Pitpillooheen (Calf of Leg), and Ketalkpoosmin (Stripes Turned Down).

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  AUGUST 9, 1877

  HE COULD HEAR THE MUFFLED HOOFBEATS COMING IN that ear pressed against the forest floor. Even more of the red buggers come to join in the god-blamed slaughter.

  In panic, Private John O. Bennett took another deep breath and heaved with his free leg, giving all he had to shove it against the ribs of the dying mule, desperate to pull the pinned leg free before those horsemen, or those working in on foot, got close enough to finish him off. Grunting again, straining harder this time, Bennett threw every bit of his dwindling reserves into his task—heart thumping, breathing short and ragged, his eyes ever darting about, ears attuned to every little sound that thundered out of the shadowy timber.

  It wasn’t as if John O. Bennett were a stranger to fighting; no stranger to tough scrapes was he. Why, he’d even be celebrating his fifty-seventh birthday this fall if he ever got his leg out from under this damned mule. If, that is, the critter hadn’t broken any of his bones when it collapsed with him under it.

  Bennett clenched his eyes shut, of a sudden praying that God with His limitless grace would move the damned mule so he could make a run of it, just to have a chance … rather than be trapped here when the red bastards showed up.

  He’d marched into Mexico with Kearney’s frontier army back in ’46, no mere lad at twenty-five. Dragoons, they were called in those days. Then he had served out another entire war in Union Blue. While there were some who craved the stripes of corporal or sergeant—Bennett had tried them both—private had a much nicer ring to it these days of what he had figured would be his last enlistment. B Company, Seventh U. S. Infantry.

  Last summer he’d been with his captain, James H. Bradley, that hot afternoon they spyglassed the carcasses of man and beast on the distant hillside overlooking what few burial lodges the Sioux and Cheyenne had left behind at the Little Bighorn.

  Old enough to be the lieutenant’s father, how Bennett had wanted to march into battle with Bradley again that morning—good man that the lieutenant was and all—but Bradley had other ideas for the aging private who vividly personified “an Old Army soldier.”

  “You know how General Gibbon feels about you, Private.”

  He had smiled at Bradley. “You always did know how to make this old man blush now, sir.”

  “Gibbon calls you his ‘brave old John Bennett,’ ” Bradley had repeated. “So we want you to stay and give the two sergeants a steady hand.”

  “They ain’t young whips, are they, Lieutenant?”

  Bradley had shaken his head. “No. Daly and Frederick. Both old salts.”

  “Not near as old as me.”

  The lieutenant had grinned. “No man’s a fighting man like you, Private Bennett. With you along, we know the gun will get down there when we need it to open up on ’em come morning.”

  Minutes later Bradley was leading the rest of Gibbon’s boys away, leaving that mountain howitzer and its six-man gun crew to nurse the balky six-mule team down the trail behind a civilian who would scout ahead and pick a way down to some spot overlooking the village, where they could put the fieldpiece into action. Wouldn’t that make them Nez Perce scamper and prance!

  At the wagon train in those final minutes before Joe Blodgett started them down the creek, Lieutenant Jacobs’s Negro manservant, William Woodcock, decided he’d come along, too, rather than waiting back with the train guard on the mountainside.* Woodcock figured he would carry his master’s double-barreled shotgun along for some proper protection since he was going on foot, leading a packhorse burdened with a quarter of a ton of rifle ammunition.

  Bennett climbed up on the off-hand lead mule and they rumbled out of the wagon camp, the twelve-pounder on its prairie carriage, its long, wheeled caisson attached, following Sergeant John W. H. Frederick, a thirty-year veteran of both the Civil War and the Seventh Infantry with a record marked “most exceptional”—the only man in the crew with any artillery experience—-and Sergeant Patrick C. Daly, a forty-four-year-old emigrant from county Limerick, Ireland. After three long enlistments in the Seventh Infantry, his was an excellent duty record as well.

  The rest of the detail consisted of Corporal Robert E. Sale, a twenty-nine-year-old recruit with an extreme devotion to duty; Private Malcolm McGregor, a thirty-one-year-old emigrant from Glasgow, Scotland; and Private John H. Goale, a twenty-six-year-old recruit from Cincinnati.

  “I hear you know where you’re going, Blodgett,” Bennett said as they rumbled across the slope.

  “I been down this way more’n once,” the civilian said. “We’ll be there in no time.”

  Fact was, Blodgett had been in and through this part of Montana Territory before it even was Montana Territory. The first time was back in 1859, when the entire Bitterroot valley had no more than twenty-nine white settlers! Three years later he had guided supply wagons over from the bustling mining settlement of Bannack, by way of the Big Hole and this very same Trail Creek. His road was used two years later in ’64 by a party of emigrants and again in ’69 by another train of settlers bound for the Bitterroot. Using that path he knew so well, Blodgett got the gun crew down to the bluff overlooking the village just past daylight, after they had been hearing the gunfire for some time.

  Bennett had glanced over his shoulder, just barely seeing Woodcock back up the trail, patiently leading that lone pack mule on foot.

  Upon reaching the clearing Blodgett had picked out, the old private remained atop that howitzer’s lead mule, coaxing that beast the best he could to get the team turned so the howitzer could be put into action. That’s when the sergeants got the rest of the crew to unhitch the caisson and muscle it to the side, chocking the wheels, then throwing back the tops of both chests to expose the eight rounds held by each box.

  “Give it to ’em down there where all them warriors are!” Sergeant Frederick ordered. “Bring its ass round this way!”

  Their breath puffing in the cold morning air, the four others laid their shoulders into the wheels.

  “Gimme some elevation,” Frederick growled at them. “We gotta make it reach, boys.”

  “Which of these charges do you want?” Sergeant Daly asked as Corporal Sales went to work dropping the elevation screw.

  “One of them spherical cases to start!” Frederick ordered. “This gun won’t reach much more’n a thousand yards. But that spherical case’ll give them warriors something to reckon with anyway, I’d wager.”

  Bennett kept a tight rein on the mule team when the howitzer belched that first time, jolting the piece as Frederick and the others scrambled to swab out the bore and reload, this time using one of the shells.

  “Two pounds lighter!” Frederick was explaining when Blodgett suddenly gave the warning.

  “We’re gonna have company soon!” the civilian barked.

  They all peered down the slope for but a moment, seeing how some of the Nez Perce horsemen were starting from the south end of the village toward their position.

  “How sharp’s that slope?” Frederick grumbled as he turned his back on the valley below. “Thirty degrees? Maybe more? Crank down that screw and gimme all the elevation you can by rolling the bloody gun up on these chocks! This’un’s gotta reach farther for us to do any good for our men down below!”

  “You damn well better hurry, boys!” Bennett roared about the time Blodgett leape
d atop his horse and shot right on past him without a word of fare-thee-well, lunging up the back trail.

  While Bennett had been concentrating his attention on those warriors streaming out of the village for a notch of timber north of their gun placement, he hadn’t been at all aware of the Nez Perce dashing toward them along the slope just above their position—horsemen who had already fled the camp below and were well along in the process of flanking Gibbon’s attack force. The first shot stung the lead mule low in the neck, not far from where the private gripped the harness straps. It whipped its head from side to side, then started kicking as a second shot struck it low in the belly—doing everything it could to pitch its rider off.

  He cursed himself many times for blindly doing his best to stay on that wounded mule, even as it keeled to the side and crashed down on his right leg in a web of tangled harness, noisy, braying mules, and a maze of stomping, thrashing legs and hooves.

  The first thing Bennett did when he caught his breath was try to pull himself free. No good. The second thing he thought to do was look around for what help he could call over.

  “This is another Custer massacre!” one of the privates shrieked as he bounded away up the hill.

  Bennett watched the backs of McGregor and Goale disappear up the hill through the shadows of the lodgepole pine. Likely gonna run all the way to Fort Ellis—brave sons a bitches they are!

  He heard a loud slap of blood hitting flesh and bone—wondering if it were another one of these cantankerous mules as he brought up his arms to cover his face from their slashing hooves. Through the dancing legs he caught a glimpse of Corporal Sales sliding down against one of the caisson wheels, his Springfield still clutched in both hands, the front of his gray pullover dark with a shiny gravy stain. The corporal’s chin slowly sank until it rested against his breastbone and he didn’t move again.

  “You hit, Bennett?”

  “No, Sergeant Frederick!” he cried, recognizing the artilleryman’s voice. “I can use your help gettin’ my leg out—”

  “I was hoping you could help me!” Frederick interrupted with a sputter. “I’ve took a bullet.”

  “Shit,” Sergeant Daly grumbled aloud. “I s’pose neither of you’s gonna be coming to help me get outta of me fix, are you now?”

  “You wounded, too?” Frederick asked.

  “Not so bad I can’t make a run for it with you,” Daly admitted.

  Frederick said, “Get over here on this side of the gun and together we’ll get up to them trees—”

  “Sergeants!” Bennett cried.

  “Shuddup and lay quiet!” Frederick ordered as he crabbed around the far side of the caisson in a crouch. “There ain’t nothing we can do for you. Maybe they’ll run right past you and come after us!”

  Bennett listened as the two men shuffled away, half-dragging each other into the timber—the sound of their scuffing boots quickly drowned out by the chorus of victorious war cries headed his way.

  “Shuddup and lay quiet, he says!” Bennett cursed. “Goddamn the sergeants of this world!”

  He damn well wasn’t going to take the chance those horsemen would rush on past him when they found a white man pinned down—prime pickings for some delicious torture. He thrashed to one side, pushing with his free leg again, then turned himself onto the other side, ready to thump the heaving animal on the back of the head—

  When he felt the knot under his right thigh. His bloody folding knife!

  Twisting slightly to drag it out of the front pocket of his britches, the private snapped it open as he stretched his body for all it was worth, struggling to get close enough to the mule’s neck to do some good. Spitting out a mouthful of pine needles and dirt, Bennett jabbed the knife’s tip into the mule’s hide. The animal barely moved. Again he stabbed. And the beast moved a little more.

  Finally he jabbed and jabbed, all the harder—heaving back on his leg at the same time.

  It popped free!

  Quickly looking around, he saw his Springfield was under the same damned mule, but he had that knife. The leg was coming alive with agonizing stabs of pain as blood surged back through the crushed, thirsty tissue. Bennett thought he should give it a try and shifted a little weight onto it—nearly falling—then whirled around suddenly at that war cry.

  Across the clearing a warrior was charging him on foot.

  Lunging on that half-asleep leg, Bennett scooped up Corporal Sales’s rifle and immediately dropped to his knee. Firing off a shot that made the Nez Perce skid to a halt and duck for cover, Bennett clambered to his feet and started up the trail behind everyone else.

  He wasn’t sure how long that wooden leg of his would stay under him, what with the strain of his run, or how long his lungs would hold out, burning the way they were with such exertion at this high altitude—but Private Bennett wasn’t about to turn belly-up now!

  Not after the greasers down in Mexico and the Rebs down south had both tried to kill him more times than he cared to count … this was one soldier who wasn’t about to turn his scalp over to these red bastards!

  *Such relationships between officers and slaves were not unheard of in the Indian-fighting army of the West. It was more often than not a relationship that was ignored by the higher echelons of the army, just as it was with Surgeon John FitzGerald’s Negro cook and house servant, Jennie.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  AUGUST 9, 1877

  “KILL THAT GODDAMN HORSE, WILL YOU, SIR!”

  Lieutenant Charles Woodruff had listened to many of those pleas over the last few minutes … then reluctantly decided he had but one thing he could do.

  His was the only horse that had reached the siege area alive. Colonel John Gibbon had abandoned his big gray down in the village with its broken leg, and by the time the retreat began none of the other handful of mounts a few of the civilians rode down from the wagon train ever managed to get out of the village alive.

  Just as soon as they were completely surrounded, the Nez Perce began sighting in on Woodruff’s animal—certainly the biggest target, easiest, too, since the men were religiously hugging the ground and digging in.

  At first Woodruff had resisted the notion of killing the animal himself. If the Indians ended up doing it, he could accept that. But to kill such a magnificent horse himself?

  For a long time as he brooded on it the lieutenant kept waiting to hear a third shot from that howitzer, knowing that the arrival of the fieldpiece was sure to drive off the warriors who had them surrounded, forcing them to flee on out of the village, raising their seige before his horse was wounded beyond any hope of recovery. But they heard no more than those two cannonshots—his hopes fading as quickly as had the hissing boom of that second, and final, blast from the mountain howitzer.

  “Just shoot your horse and be done with it, Mr. Woodruff!” Gibbon finally growled himself, grown exasperated as the lieutenant’s mount kicked and thrashed against the hold the lieutenant had on it, its wild gyrations endangering any of the men entrenching nearby as it danced this way and that.

  “Yes, sir.”

  One of the civilians shouted, “We’re gonna need them horse steaks for lunch, Lieutenant!”

  Without paying the brittle laughter any heed, Woodruff grabbed hold of the stirrup, quickly dragged himself to his feet, then lunged alongside the nervous animal to its head. Before he had time to reconsider what he was doing he fired a pistol bullet into the horse’s brain.

  It dropped like a sack of buckshot, kicked a few times, then lay still with a final shudder as a bullet scuffed into the dirt beside his left foot. For an instant, that foot went numb; then his heel began to burn. Sinking to his knee as bullets whined through the trees, he twisted around to inspect his boot. A bullet had sliced through the back of the leather, making for an oozy flesh wound.

  “Very good, Mr. Woodruff,” Gibbon said. “Come with me and the others.”

  Woodruff rose to a crouch, slowly putting pressure on the wounded heel, finding that it didn’t h
urt nearly as bad as it looked. He stretched out on his belly, following the colonel and a handful of officers as they crawled to the end of their crude one-acre fortress, right to the very last of the skinny lodgepole pines, where they found themselves at the edge of a sharp embankment that fell away some twenty feet to the creek and willows below.

  “Look there, General,” Woodruff announced. “Warriors working their way at us.”

  “Should we fire at them?” Captain Rawn asked.

  Gibbon wagged his head. “No. I came here only to have us a look at the village, reconnoiter the enemy’s retaking of their camp.”

  Those warriors and the Nez Perce who had already closed in around them on the hillside, had Gibbon’s command surrounded. It was clear from the discussion the officers held there at the edge of the embankment that there was no way to break out of the lines and rush the encampment in some desperate bid to locate more ammunition among the lodges. That became the overriding concern there and then: the fact that they were separated from their wagon train carrying a reserve of ammunition.

  “But what if the Nez Perce ride back on our trail and find our wagon corral?” asked Captain Richard Comba.

  Gibbon’s face turned a solemn gray. “The train guard isn’t big enough to hold off a stiff attack.”

  “I respectfully submit we’ve got to have our company commanders stop their men from throwing away their ammunition,” Woodruff suggested.

  Gibbon agreed as they heard an unearthly scream from one of the wounded men left in the creek bottom—those agonized cries from below filling the quiet pauses between gunshots on this hillside. “All of you, we must conserve our cartridges. Put a stop to rapid firing at the enemy. Shoot only when you are assured of a target.”

  As Woodruff was just starting to rock onto a knee to follow the others crabbing back to rejoin the men in that corral of rifle pits, a volley of shots persuaded the lieutenant to pitch himself onto the ground with the rest. He lay there a few moments, catching his breath, then realized his legs hurt like hell—probably from that excruciating climb up the slope.