Jennie Norton stepped out the open front door, grinding the flour on her hands into the apron tied around her waist. Behind her came their nine-year-old son, Hill, and Jennie’s sixteen-year-old sister, Lynn Bowers.
“It’s Lew and Pete all right,” Norton called as he descended the four steps into the spacious yard of Cottonwood House, a combination hotel, saloon, general store, and horse-breeding ranch Norton ran some eighteen miles northwest of Grangeville, Idaho, near the headwaters of Shebang Creek.
Luther P. Wilmot waved to those on the porch as he pulled back on the reins, then leaned against the brake squealing in protest. He turned on the high spring seat to watch his partner, Pete Ready, bring his bright-green, high-walled Pittsburgh freighter to a halt directly behind his.
“Bound for Mount Idaho, are you, Lew?” Norton asked as he shook hands with Wilmot the moment the teamster dropped to the ground.
Jabbing a thumb at his wagon, Wilmot said, “Yep. Supplies for the Vollmer and Scott store.” He turned to Mrs. Norton and nodded politely. “Howdy, Jennie.”
She smiled. “Lew, you and Pete care to stay for supper?”
“Don’t believe we will this evening,” Wilmot refused as he peered at the sky. “Still a lot of light left, so we’ll get on down the trail a ways till we’re forced to camp for the night.”
“Hill’s gonna be disappointed,” Norton warned, gesturing to his son. “Way out here, why … the boy hankers for a new face and new stories. Sure we can’t get you fellas to stay?”
“Nawww,” Wilmot repeated. “We’ll take a cool drink from your spring, though.”
The three men started toward the corner of the house. Looking over his shoulder to find that his son had not followed them, Benjamin Norton asked in a whisper, “What you hear of Injun troubles?”
Ready and Wilmot stopped in their tracks. “Injun troubles?” Wilmot echoed. “Don’t know nothing ’bout no Injun troubles.”
“You haven’t seen any of the bucks out?”
Ready shook his head. “Ain’t seen an Injun since we got past Lapwai, Ben.”
“Why you asking?” Wilmot inquired suspiciously.
Norton glanced again at the porch guardedly, then said, “There’s been talk the past couple days, ’bout them Non-Treaty bands gathered down at the lake near the Split Rocks. Time for ’em to go on in like the army ordered ’em to.”
“What sort of talk?” Ready asked.
Norton wagged his head. “Just that … folks around here feel there’s something afoot.”
This time it was Wilmot who asked, “Been any trouble?”
Ben shrugged. “Dunno for sure, fellas. Hell, with us being stuck way out here so far a piece from Mount Idaho and Grangeville too, why … I was hoping the two of you might tell me what’s up with the Injuns.”
“Ever’thing I’ve heard says the Nez Perce are being peaceable,” Wilmot explained. “Last I knowed before we rode up to Lewiston, they had their women and children with ’em over on Camas Prairie, which means they ain’t fixing up no war parties. If they was planning on making some raids, them bucks would first see to getting their families away somewhere safe, put the women and kids where the soldiers couldn’t get to ’em. I wouldn’t pay no mind to any rumors you hear from some of them scared ones, Ben.”
Norton pursed his lips thoughtfully a moment, then admitted, “S’pose you better call me a nervous Nellie, Lew.”
At the sound of footsteps the three men turned to find Jennie Norton appearing around the corner of the house.
She grinned apologetically and asked, “What you men up to here?”
“We come over here so the children couldn’t hear us, dear,” Ben explained. “Lew and Pete haven’t heard a thing of trouble.”
She told the freight men, “I think you ought to stay.”
Wilmot glanced at Ready and said, “Figger to push on, Jennie.”
Mrs. Norton faced the teamsters. “You may say nothing’s going to happen, but too many folks been talking over at Mount Idaho, and Grangeville too.”
“That’s only talk,” Ready tried to reassure the woman.
“There’s enough omens, fellas,” she argued. “But even if you’re right, sure would make me feel a lot safer if the two of you could stay for the night.”
Wilmot flicked a glance at his freighting partner, then told her, “I’m sorry, Jennie. We gotta make good time. Need to be in to Mount Idaho afore noon tomorrow with these supplies or we get docked by Vollmer for getting in late. Listen, if them bucks was out doing their devilmost, we’d seen something of ’em, wouldn’t we?”
“So you won’t stay?” she repeated.
“No, we can’t,” Wilmot apologized. “Sorry that you’re feeling less’n safe. But I’d sure like to get home to my own family.”
She drew her lips into a straight, grim line, then said, “You two fellas have a safe trip.”
The three of them watched Jennie turn and head for the house, disappointment in her walk.
“Didn’t mean to upset your missus, Ben,” Wilmot said.
“We’re all a little jumpy past few days,” Norton expressed as all three heard the sound of hoofbeats and turned toward the spur that connected the road-ranch with the nearby Mount Idaho–Lewiston Road.
As the lone rider slowed out front, the trio stepped around the corner of the house and into the yard to greet the horseman.
“By damn, thought it looked like you, Lew!” Wilmot cried out.
Swinging down from the saddle, Lewis Day held out his hand. “Luther P. Wilmot! You going or coming with your wagons?”
“Bound for Mount Idaho,” Wilmot said.
Day shook hands with Ready and Norton, then said, “On my way to the commander at Fort Lapwai with a message from L. P. Brown.”
It was almost as if a drop of January ice water suddenly spilled down Norton’s backbone. “Message?”
Day nodded. “Too many of them Injuns acting too unfriendly last few days. Loyal figgers their war chiefs is working ’em up for one last hurrah now that they gotta be on the reservation tomorrow.”
“How you know that?” Wilmot demanded.
“Couple fellas seen ’em practicing war manuevers out there at the Rocky Canyon lake,” Day explained. “So all the folks for miles around are streaming into Mount Idaho for protection.”
“Can you stay the night?” Norton asked, glancing over his shoulder at the house. “I know it’d make Jennie feel safer.”
Day turned to Wilmot and Ready, then to Norton. “I really can’t—gotta push on soon as I can borrow a fresh horse off Ben here—but these two fellas might stay.”
“They’re pushing on too,” Ben said in resignation.
“We’ve got ground to cover afore bedding down for the night,” Ready explained to Lew Day.
“C’mon then,” Norton said as he started them toward the barn where he kept many of his prized horses. “’Cept for my stallion, you can have your pick of the three best runners, Lew.”
Chapter 15
June 14, 1877
She was hunched over in her garden, pulling up spring onions and a small head of big-leafed lettuce to add to the supper she had heating over the fire in the house, when Isabella Benedict noticed that it had grown cooler.
Straightening, with the basket suspended from one forearm, she looked to find the sun just then slipping out of sight beyond the hills across the Salmon just down White Bird Creek. Amazing, she thought, just how quickly it became cool once the sun had abandoned the sky in this country, even of an early summer night.
Taking only two steps toward the house, Isabella stopped, brushed a long sprig of red hair out of her eyes, then suddenly spotted them on the hillside above the house. The heathens were just sitting there, watching her. Sure enough planning what they would do to her if they got their hands on a white woman.
But rather than running, rather than showing them she even knew they were there, Isabella turned slowly and continued to the house. Once inside, she flu
ng her basket down beside the fireplace where she had started supper and went to the tiny room just off the parlor where Samuel lay on a small, low bed.
“They’ve come, Husband,” she announced as the girl carried her little brother across her hip into the room.
Benedict was raising himself up on an elbow when the Frenchman stopped at the doorway to the small room. Samuel looked at the miner, “You got shells in your pocket?”
August Bacon patted both pockets. “They won’t get in your house.”
“Go to the door and keep watch for ’em while I send my family away.”
“Away?” Isabella repeated two octaves higher with shrill despair.
“Take the children and get into the woods,” Sam ordered.
“And you?”
“I’ll hide here, Isabella,” he snapped. “Now go.”
She bent to kiss him on the mouth, then ran her fingers down his cheek, saying only, “Sam. Sam.”
Then she turned, sweeping the children before her, herding them toward the back door and into the side yard, where she headed straight for the gate that would lead them to a path winding back into the hills.
But Isabella had no more than reached the gate and swung it open when she spotted the three horsemen approaching from that last stand of trees up the path. She and the children didn’t stand a chance getting to the timber.
“Get back!” she hissed at her four-year-old daughter, reaching out to snatch the baby from Emmy’s hip.
Together they wheeled and sprinted back to the house, diving in through the back door as she heard the horses, even heard the savages’ voices behind her as the Indians reached the gate. She heard it clatter open when one of them swung the gate so hard it struck the garden fence with a violent, noisy crack.
Sprinting through the parlor, Isabella reached the small room. “Sam!” Frightened to find her husband gone from his bed.
At the loud, booming roar of a nearby gunshot, she wheeled in a swirl of her skirt, knocking down the small toddler. “Get behind me!” she shouted at the children.
Then came a smattering of rifle fire from the Indians, their bullets smacking against the house, one of them shattering something made of pottery on a shelf in the pantry, another bullet clanging against a cast-iron kettle or skillet. She was turning back into the parlor just as she heard the wind slammed out of the Frenchman’s lungs in one loud gust, watching Bacon being driven backward in the air, landing on the floor right at her feet.
Isabella saw the smear of shiny crimson where the miner had slid across the floorboards before he came to a stop. Bacon looked up at her, gurgling, his lips moving as his fingers patted the dark, damp petals of the blood blooming on his chest. The fingers stopped moving as she watched, his lips, too. Then his eyes no longer blinked and she could smell how he had soiled himself at the moment he died.
Emmy screamed, lunging against her mother, as Isabella watched the warriors break through the front door. Clutching both her children against her when the Indians stepped close, she steeled herself—ready for them to kill her, even to dishonor her, which men like her husband had always called “a fate worse than death itself.”
But at least she would live, able to go in search of Samuel. As the ugly warrior with the twisted grin stepped up before her, Isabella swore she would never tell Sam how they had shamed her. And she would make the children promise never to tell their father what they had watched.
“You go nah,” the warrior said in nearly understandable English.
“Wh-what?” she stuttered in utter surprise, not comprehending that this painted, blood-splattered warrior could speak her tongue.
“Go,” he repeated and turned slightly, pointing at the door. “You go nah.”
Gulping, Isabella nodded dumbly. “We’ll g-go.”
She started toward the door, stepping over the blood smeared on the floor, smelling the dead Frenchman’s bowel stench, the hem of her long skirt slurring through the long, gleaming patch of crimson.
“Go Man-well huss,” the warrior said, his strange words catching her at the door.
“Man-well?” she asked as she turned back to the Indian. “Oh, Manuel. Yes.”
“Man-well huss.”
“Huss?” she repeated that word, too. “H-house?”
“Yesss, huss. Uh-ther woe-man at Man-well huss.”
Must be he was referring to Jennet, she thought. Another woman was already there. So, was he saying that woman was safe there?
“Thank you—I’ll go now,” she said quietly, sensing deep-felt gratitude for this savage who was freeing her. Isabella Benedict folded her children against the billows of her bloody dress and pushed a path for them through the two dozen warriors, saying, “I’ll take my children to the Manuel house.”
* * *
“General, sir?”
Howard turned, finding his former aide-de-camp, the post’s officer of the day, saluting at the open doorway. “Major.”
Then the officer turned to Captain Perry and clicked his heels together, saluting again. “Colonel?”
“Something urgent, Major Boyle?” Perry asked as he returned the officer’s salute and used the man’s brevet rank.
“A message addressed to you from Mount Idaho, sir. Brought in by a civilian courier.” Captain William H. Boyle held out the twice-folded paper between them.
“Thank you for your prompt attention to this, Captain,” Perry replied, beginning to open the message.
“Do you wish me to wait while you read it, Colonel?”
“By all means,” and Perry’s voice trailed off as his eyes danced over the scrawl.
Howard watched the first deep furrow crease Perry’s brow but waited until the post commander finished reading what plainly was important enough that it was carried here by courier across some sixty-two miles of all-but-uninhabited frontier.
With the growing warmth of that late afternoon, Howard slowly removed his heavy coat, folded it neatly, and laid it over the back of the chair here in Perry’s office at Fort Lapwai that fourteenth day of June. That morning the post commander had managed to prevail upon Howard not to remain in Lewiston while Watkins went about his business of securing supplies for the next six months. With the captain’s insistence, Howard finally agreed that he would be more comfortable out at the fort while they awaited the arrival of the Non-Treaty bands. The two of them had no more than made that twelve-mile ride from Lewiston to reach Perry’s office when the Fort Lapwai quartermaster and officer of the day showed up with the message.
“The citizens of Mount Idaho are in an uproar,” Perry began his explanation. “This comes from their spokesman, L. P. Brown. He owns an inn and a store there as I recall.”
“An uproar?” Howard repeated, settling in the chair against his folded coat.
“Brown writes that many of the settlers in the area are very concerned with the large gathering of the Non-Treaty bands near Rocky Canyon.”
“What have these citizens got to be concerned about?” Howard felt himself bristling. “Isn’t the Nez Perce gathering on the Camas Prairie less than a day from the reservation? This message from Brown only confirms that the Non-Treaty bands are but a matter of miles from surrendering tomorrow, right on schedule.”
“Brown says it’s been reported to him that the bands camped at the lake have become insolent and their actions indicate trouble from them.”
“Trouble?”
“The warriors have been parading around full of bluster, and they’re boasting that they will fight any soldiers sent to put them onto the reservation. They’ve come into town to buy ammunition and powder too.”
“So it sounds as if this Brown fellow is duly alarmed?”
Perry shook his head. “That’s the strangest thing, General. He says he isn’t alarmed—just thought it well to inform me of what was going on among the bands. He says they are on the lookout for the soldiers coming. So, he nonetheless ended his letter by requesting that I send troops. Hmmm, here it is—‘as soon as yo
u can, a sufficient force to handle them without gloves, should they be disposed to resist.’”
The general waited a moment for Perry to continue reading, but when the captain did not, Howard asked, “So what are you disposed to do in this situation, Colonel?”
Perry’s face relaxed. “I trust Brown’s assessment of things, General. Come morning, I think I’ll send a couple of men with an interpreter down to Mount Idaho to see for ourselves what the state of things is.”
“If nothing else,” Howard agreed, “I figure you’ll placate the settlers that you’re doing something about their complaints, Colonel.”
“Then you agree with my response to this message, sir?”
“By all means, Colonel,” the general answered. “Send out your party in the morning and we’ll find out for ourselves just what in God’s name has got those civilians so stirred up down there.”
* * *
Lew Wilmot and Pete Ready got their cool drink from the spring while Lew Day walked off with Ben Norton to have his pick of the horse breeder’s finest for the final leg of that ride of his to Fort Lapwai.
In a matter of minutes, Day was re-saddled and heading north, disappearing around a bend in the trail, as the teamsters were climbing back onto their wagon seats, intending to cover a few more miles before darkness forced them to stop for the night. Just about the time they were ready to slap leather down on the backs of those twelve freight horses, a small wagon rumbled into sight, rattling off the road and into the Norton yard, a high wheel spinning until it clattered back onto the ground.
John Chamberlin sat perched on the springless seat; behind him his pregnant wife and their two young children huddled in the wagon bed. Hungry for any news after two days of rumors had compelled them to make for Cottonwood House, Chamberlin hung on every word as Norton, Wilmot, and Ready related the latest rumors of Indian trouble brewing over at the Rocky Canyon lake. With the way his missus was latched onto her husband’s arm, it was no small wonder that Chamberlin begged Wilmot and Ready to stay the night.
Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series) Page 16
