This gray, cold dawn as these few fighting men stripped to their breechclouts and quickly painted themselves with the favored red and ocher earth colors, it was not only the certainty that they would be outnumbered that gave them pause. It was also knowing that of these few who would be riding out to confront the sua-pies, little more than half carried firearms. Of those weapons, many were ancient muzzleloaders from the old pelt-trading days. The rest carried only bows made of wild sheep horn or their kopluts to crack against the white man’s bones, to crush his skull.
“Yellow Wolf, come!”
He turned to find the handsome Ollokot hurrying his way, leading his cream-colored war pony by hand, wearing his commander’s sash over his shoulder, those white man’s farseeing glasses he had borrowed from Black Foot now suspended around his neck by a thick cord.
“Ollokot!”
“Fetch up your horse, Yellow Wolf! I am taking some warriors out to see how our peace-talkers do with the soldiers.”
Stuffing his bow into his wolf-hide quiver, the young warrior draped the wide, furry strap over his shoulder and followed Ollokot and more than six-times-ten out of the village toward the mouth of the canyon where the soldiers would emerge onto the rolling bottomground.
Nearing the first bluffs, Two Moons peeled off to the right, taking a three-hand count of the warriors with him. That left Ollokot with close to five-times-ten when his horsemen took up a position on the west side of the canyon behind a low butte. At their backs lay their village of women and children. Between it and Ollokot’s men lay a last low ridge that blocked the camp from the soldiers’ view. Near at hand stood a pair of small hills where the Nee-Me-Poo had come to bury some of their dead for generations beyond count.
Not only did they have a village to defend, Yellow Wolf brooded as they waited in the growing light of this new day, but they had the bones of their forefathers to protect as well.
Pressing those far-seeing glasses to his eyes, Ollokot silently studied the distance. Then he removed them from his face and turned to address the warriors. “It is good,” he explained. “I see Jonah and Reuben leading the soldiers down the trail—”
“How many soldiers?” demanded Shore Crossing.
“No more than the fingers on both my hands,” Ollokot explained. “To see Jonah and Reuben coming, with no more soldiers than that—this is a good sign.”
“How is it a good sign?” growled Tipyahlahnah Kaps Kaps, known as Strong Eagle, whose pony stood beside Shore Crossing’s.
“They are two Treaty men with good hearts,” Ollokot declared. “With Jonah and Reuben riding in front, our peace-talkers can go out to see for sure that the soldiers themselves are coming with good hearts.”
“And if those soldiers are hiding behind Jonah and Reuben to fool us as they’re riding down on our village?” Shore Crossing snarled. “What then?”
“From here we can race into position and block the trail between the two hills,” Ollokot told his warriors. “If our peace talkers fail to turn the soldiers around … then it is here that we can block their charge into our village.”
Yellow Wolf felt the surge of heat course through his body as his wyakin prepared him for the coming fight. With Two Moons on one side of the canyon and Ollokot’s men on the other, they could flank the soldiers, surround them, and cut them off before the white men knew what had happened.
“If these Treaty men and their soldiers did not come to make a peace with us,” Ollokot told the hushed warriors, “this is where the war will begin.”
So it would be here too that Yellow Wolf knew they would crush the foolish soldiers and this war would end before it ever really began.
Chapter 34
June 17, 1877
Ad Chapman saw to it his trackers hung to the left as they pushed on down the trail toward the valley, the trail taking them down and up, down and up the gently rolling knolls.
The next time he turned around in the saddle, Chapman saw the small army patrol just disappearing from view where they had dipped behind one of the intervening hills. Then his eyes climbed higher still against the far slopes, finding the rest of the colonel’s soldiers emerging like a blue-clad snake slithering out of Poe Saddle on their descent. The three groups were constantly in and out of sight of one another as the country grew more broken once they neared the valley floor.
He signaled to the Treaty Nez Perce, motioning the trackers over close enough to give them the order. Abraham Brooks and Frank Husush kicked their ponies ahead of the rest so they could probe the trail around the ridge that came in from the east—hiding everything that lay beyond it.
It was clear from the travois scars and pony tracks crisscrossing this damp ground that they had to be getting close to the village.
The pair was back in no time, loping to a halt to report to him in their tongue.
“Camp is ahead. Smell smoke. See lots of sign.”
Chapman nodded, twisting about in the saddle to spot the advance detail of soldiers disappearing behind another intervening hill.
“Go tell that small band of soldiers,” he explained in Nez Perce. “I’ll go to see the village for myself until you get back.”
He watched Husush and Brooks gallop away, then turned to the last two of his trackers. “Stay here. Wait for the others to come with the soldiers.”
Then he spurred his horse into motion and started around the grassy knob. The Salmon wasn’t far now. Maybe the bastards had camped at its mouth, he thought.
Unable to see the two Nez Perce where he had left them behind, Chapman rode down the gentle slope where the ground would eventually rise abruptly again to form a long ridge. He was watching it for any sign of lookouts or camp guards when he spotted some movement off to his right.
A handful of them, wrapped in their fancy blankets and with feathers spinning in the morning wind as they appeared around the far end of that long ridge. They were making for him, and one of them started shouting.
The Nez Perce words floated across the intervening distance: “What do you people want?”
As Chapman was dragging the carbine out of the boot beneath his right leg, his skittish horse backed a few steps until Chapman squeezed hard enough with his knees to halt the animal in its tracks. He realized his heart was thundering in his chest. Blood roared in his ears. Knowing that bunch was come gunning for him—knowing that he stood alone to start this fight.
“Who are you people?” the distant voice demanded, more shrill this time. “What do you want here?”
Quickly levering a cartridge into the chamber as he heard their voices reach him, Chapman gave the half-dozen of them no more than a cursory look as he turned quickly in the saddle to spot the small detail of soldiers and Shearer’s militia angling down the slope behind him. At this distance, he was certain not one of the soldiers or those civilians could understand the words. Likely those soldiers would figure the loud words to be war cries and battle songs—boasting that they were about to lift the white men’s scalps.
Nestling the rifle into the crook of his shoulder, Ad Chapman gazed down the short barrel of the saddle carbine and the front blade found the prettiest of them dressed in his bright red blanket. Closer and closer they were coming, eighty yards now.
“What do you people want?”
Most of them were still yelling at him, raising their arms in the air as they pushed their ponies into a lope—coming on faster. Less’n sixty yards. Them arms in the air: most likely cursing me, vowing what they are going to do when they catch up to me.
“Whadda we want?” he murmured against the buttstock, letting his breath halfway out of his lungs. “This here’s what the hell we want.”
He squeezed off the shot, watching the six horsemen jerk back on their reins as soon as the carbine barked.
Levering another cartridge into the chamber, he held on another warrior: high, allowing for a good amount of drop to the bullet’s flight—
But the enemy horsemen were already wheeling around and racin
g away by the time the shot reached them. They were scattering, just like the cowards he knew them to be. If he was going to get another shot at any of them from here on out, Chapman figured, he’d have to shoot ’em in the ass, seeing how they were skeedaddling so fast.
“C’mon back here, you yellow-livered buggers!”
So be it then. They wanted a chase. He jammed a third cartridge into the action and picked up the reins, jabbing his horse into motion.
Ad Chapman would give these red-bellies a chase.
* * *
“Trumpeter!” bawled Edward Russell Theller.
John M. Jones jumped his horse around the others and came alongside the lieutenant.
From the moment Perry had dispatched him and his detail into the advance, Theller had pushed them on down the steep grade of the misty wagon road until they got their first glimpse of the widening valley, dotted with gently rolling swells and a jagged ridge in their front. As he led the men up the gentle incline toward that ridge, the lieutenant heard the crack of a carbine.
“Get up here now, Trumpeter!” he shouted angrily, moving his advance detail into a gallop with a wave.
Up ahead at the base of the ridge that suddenly popped into view as they reached the brow of the hill, Theller and his men spotted the lone civilian firing off the second of those two shots from his rifle. Off to the left were a few of Perry’s trackers, their horses milling as they watched the mid-distance where a handful of some Nez Perce horsemen disappeared from view around the end of the ridge to the east.
Disappeared no more than an instant before more horsemen suddenly burst into sight from behind an intervening knoll with a flattop that reminded Theller of a loaf of Delia’s bread as it came out of the oven.
At the top of the next rise he threw up his arm and halted his detail, having sighted even more small groups of horsemen boiling their way across the bottomground. To the left and to the right those warriors spread themselves into a broad line that stretched from the base of one knoll to the next, effectively barricading the advance of Perry’s battalion through that gap slashed between the hills.
He had skirmished with Apaches down on the Arizona border and fought Captain Jack’s Modocs too—so Theller was convinced these warriors would turn and run once they were confronted with stiff resistance.
“We aren’t helpless settlers you can murder,” he mumbled, watching the enemy horsemen starting to sweep closer and closer upon his left flank, where the smoother ground permitted their ponies to move all the faster.
“Trumpeter—now is the time!” Theller hollered. “Blow ‘Assembly’ for the rest of the battalion!”
Wheeling his horse about as Jones yanked on the bugle cord over his shoulder, Theller hollered, “Sergeant!”
“Sir?” responded the Scottish-born Alexander M. Baird with a thick burr.
“Dismount the men and deploy as skirmishers to meet the Indian charge. I’m going to return to the column, bringing up the rest of the company on the double!”
“You heard the lieutenant!” Baird bawled in his undisguised brogue, wheeling on the detail.
Theller was just threading his horse back through the rest of the men who were coming out of their saddles when he saw Jones press the bugle to his lips and force out the first four stuttering notes of assembly—
But that was all Jones played.
A bullet smashed into the little trumpeter’s chest, propelling him backward over the rear flanks of his horse to sprawl on the ground. Dead where he lay.
On instinct, and feeling he was suddenly about to thrash around in water way over his head, Theller—the infantry officer—kicked his horse into a gallop, lunging away, crossing up the slope.
Bring up the rest of Perry’s F Company, he kept repeating to himself as he left his detail behind while Sergeant Baird deployed them to meet the onrushing warriors.
Bring up that god-blessed F Company.
* * *
Young Yellow Wolf raced his horse out of hiding, joining the rest of those warriors following Ollokot and the older warriors the moment that lone Shadow fired those first two shots. A low, broad ridge on their left had been hiding the war party from view until the moment they charged into the open.
While they waited in position behind the ridge, they had watched Vicious Weasel’s peace-talkers emerge into the open by riding around the west end of the long ridge, angling east across the bottomground as they hurried to intercept the Treaty Indians and those soldiers long before any threat could near the village. Suddenly they saw the six peace emissaries scattering for cover.
Then the echo of a rifle shot.
His attention had been immediately drawn to that lone rider who did not appear to be a soldier. He was dressed more like one of the settlers, or those who scratched at the ground up in the mountains. The Shadow rode a large white horse and wore a huge cream-colored big-four hat that made him stand out on the hillside. Some of the other warriors with Ollokot said they recognized the rider, at least that hat and horse. Said he was named Chapman—someone who had caused trouble for the Non-Treaty bands.
Yellow Wolf could believe it. The offer of those peace delegates had not been respected. That civilian in the big white hat had fired on their peace party!
“Look there!” one of the others shouted.
Not only did Yellow Wolf spot a small band of soldiers some distance up the slope behind the solitary white man, but even more soldiers were showing up beyond them. Now this was going to be a battle!
“I never thought I would see such a fine day for fighting!” shouted the old man riding beside him.
It was Otstotpoo, called Fire Body, an elderly warrior acclaimed as a good marksman, who was grinning at Yellow Wolf.
“I feared we would never again protect our people,” Fire Body hollered over the hoofbeats, riding knee-to-knee beside the young warrior. “Never take up the gun to protect our land!”
“Ho! Do you see that?” Yellow Wolf hollered, pointing at the small band of soldiers reaching the crest of a low hill.
“We’ve got them stopped!” Fire Body responded with a joyous yelp.
It took no more than four heartbeats for the old warrior to pull back on his reins and halt at the side of the cemetery hill where the Nee-Me-Poo buried their dead. From here in the bottom of the valley Fire Body aimed his far-shooting rifle, stolen by one of Sun Necklace’s warriors from a settler’s house in the last few days. Two counts after firing the weapon, Yellow Wolf watched one of the soldiers topple backward from his horse.
Suddenly the rest of those soldiers were leaping off the backs of their horses, dispersing in a crouch. Yellow Wolf could even faintly hear those frightened Shadows hollering to one another, they were so close already.
“I got the first one!” Fire Body cheered lustily. “Now, Yellow Wolf—you shoot one too!”
* * *
After sending Lieutenant Theller ahead with his advance guard, Captain David Perry rode at the van of the march as he brought the rest of the column down the undulating slope for the creek bottom. The citizen volunteers rode right on his tail. Forty yards behind them came F Company. Another interval of forty yards found Trimble and his H Company bringing up the rear of the march.
More than two miles down from the summit, after descending something on the order of a mile after leaving Mrs. Benedict behind to fend for herself until they finished with the hostiles, the head of the column emerged from a narrow ravine. Below them lay the widening canyon of White Bird Creek—and that meant they could well bump into some camp guards or the village itself at any time now. Day had broken.
“Halt!” he shouted, throwing up his arm.
As the column clattered to a halt behind him, he circled back around the knot of Shearer’s volunteers to deliver his orders to Joel G. Trimble. “Pass the word along, Major,” he began, using Trimble’s brevet rank. “The noncoms are to see that the men have stripped off their overcoats and have them tied behind their saddles. Company sergeants must con
firm that every soldier has his carbine loaded.”
Then Perry reined about and returned to the front of the column. He kneaded a sore calf with one hand, finding the muscle cramped from the strain required of his tensed, stiffened legs while they were descending one sharp slope after another since resuming the march at four o’clock that morning.
From this vantage point Perry could see how the well-worn wagon road looped itself down the steep southwest side of White Bird Hill before it reached the valley itself. This was the only road leading up to the Camas Prairie, the route the Salmon River settlers relied upon in traveling to and from those settlements of Grangeville and Mount Idaho, to Lewiston far beyond.
To Perry’s right, the west wall of the canyon rose abruptly to great heights. No chance of the hostiles escaping around his men there. And beyond the bottomground lay the Salmon River, still out of sight. To his left, looking east, the winding course of White Bird Creek spilled down grassy slopes sparsely dotted with timber, velvet hillsides scarred with erosion ravines thick with brush.
Gazing into the valley, Perry believed the village must lie right where the creek joined the Salmon. Between here and there, only White Bird Hill itself presented an obstacle to them now. Its mass appeared to rise right across the route he had chosen for their advance on the enemy camp.
A long, irregular shadow crossing its top indicated that the knoll must be split in half by a deep ravine. Just beyond that left half of the ridge lay the tree-lined banks of the creek—
It was an immediate reflex action: jabbing his spurs into the horse’s ribs the instant he heard that first shot echo beyond the hill. As he reached the top of the crest on his heaving mount, Perry not only heard a second shot but also recognized that it was the civilian named Chapman who was firing at a half-dozen warriors in the mid-distance.
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 33
