Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  While the rest of the two companies continued up the long slope behind him, the captain watched the scene unfold below him in that rippled bottomground surrounded by broken ridges and the slopes of a series of low hills high enough to conceal the enemy camp, if not its full complement of warriors.

  Ahead and slightly off to the left Perry spotted more than two dozen of the Nez Perce streaming out of hiding for Theller, who had halted his advance guard. Their horses appeared skittish as the nervous men milled around their leader.… He was probably in the process of ordering them to dismount to fight those oncoming warriors, holding them back by forming a thin line of skirmishers.

  Suddenly one of Theller’s riders was knocked off his horse. The rest quickly vaulted out of their saddles as if stung by a swarm of wasps. Almost half of the detail’s horses wheeled about and whipped away from the troopers who failed to hang onto the frightened animals when they dropped to the ground.

  Behind Theller, who remained mounted, the rest of his men still gripped their reins, not yet splitting out with every fourth trooper attempting to manhandle the mounts to the rear.

  He doesn’t have enough men to spare, Perry brooded angrily, sawing his mount around and spotting the closest noncom.

  “Sergeant!” the captain called. “Prepare the rest of F Company to make a charge!”

  “You’re leading us yourself, sir?” asked Sergeant Patrick Gunn.

  “Damn right,” the captain growled. “I’m leading you in there, and Captain Trimble will bring H Company on our rear.”

  As he reined his horse around in a half-circle to find how Theller’s detail was bunching on the east slope of that low hill, from the corner of his left eye Perry noticed the civilians break away from his column with an exuberant whoop. The ten of them were bellowing lustily as they clambered over the low rise and on down the gentle descent into the bottom-ground, bound for Theller’s position even as the lieutenant was turning his horse around and racing back for the head of the column above him.

  Perry twisted around in the saddle, finding that Trimble had the men of H Troop arrayed in a compact column of eights in anticipation of their charge to support Theller’s detachment—

  Just then the noisy clatter of small arms yanked his attention completely to the right. Small carbines, repeaters … Indian weapons interspersed with the booming reverberation of old muzzleloaders. The cloaking trees and brushy ravine bottom suddenly belched even more riders tearing their way at a fury, their ponies lunging across the grassy bottomground toward White Bird Hill.

  In no more than a matter of seconds, Perry fretted, Theller’s men would damn well be swallowed up and overrun!

  Chapter 35

  June 17, 1877

  As the ground below him began to boil with warriors, Ad Chapman reined up and did his best to count the redskins the way a cattleman tallied by fives, curling a finger down for every handful he added up. To his reckoning, a little more than fifty horsemen had come to fight the soldiers this day.

  So when he accounted for both those friendly Nez Perce trackers and George Shearer’s volunteers being thrown in with Colonel Perry’s soldiers, that meant they had these damnable Non-Treaties on the downside of two-to-one odds.

  Just beyond those naked horsemen in his front, Chapman could make out some of the pale lodges through the leafy trees, what with the mist beginning to burn off. From the looks of things, Ad figured the crazy bastards had pitched camp no more than a mile south of the place he had sold to John Manuel back in ’74.

  Glancing back across the slope, Chapman noticed about half of the soldiers heading down to reinforce that small detachment whom the warriors were just then sweeping around to flank. Wheeling left front into line, most of the reinforcements were yanking up their Springfields while a few of the noncoms were shoving their carbines back out of the way on their shoulder slings and drawing their long-barreled service revolvers from the mule-eared holsters angled sharply across their hipbones.

  Farther back on the heights, the remaining half of Perry’s men were just then moving out in eights, staying tightly bunched as they started down the slope.

  From the edge of a large clump of brush where he remained in the saddle, Chapman spotted the ten volunteers suddenly rein around in their tracks, spurring back for the east end of the long ridge behind George Shearer, all of them coming his way.

  “That’s the way to pluck the daisy, boys!” he whooped, waving his rifle in the air as the militia came on at a gallop.

  A bullet hissed past Chapman’s ear, yanking him around with a jerk, surprised to find a pair of warriors who had dismounted nearby. One of them held their two ponies while the other aimed his rifle for a second shot in Chapman’s direction. No small carbine, that had to be—some sort of buffalo gun to reach across the distance. That second bullet whined past him, close enough to make his asshole pucker. He kicked his horse in the ribs and sawed the reins hard to the right. Time to bust the hell out of that big gun’s range.

  The troops with their carbines at ready were coming off that last long slope by the time Chapman steered for the other civilians angling back to the protection of that line of oncoming soldiers. Shearer wore a dour grin on his face when Ad wheeled up on his horse.

  “Figgered to have all the fun your own self?” the former Confederate major shouted to Chapman over the pandemonium.

  Ad grinned and pointed back at the enemy horsemen spilling across the bottom, coming for them like a swarm of ants. “Look for your own self—I damn well saved some for you fellas!”

  Shearer didn’t get a chance to reply when the nearby brush lining White Bird Creek erupted in rifle fire on their left. As the bullets sang through them, many of the civilians found it hard to control their frightened horses. The volunteers shouted in anger, confusion, and fear.

  “Dismount!” Shearer bellowed at the top of his lungs over the growing gunfire.

  Then one of their horses reared on its hind legs, almost spilling its rider. When it came down on all fours, the animal tore off with its head down and tail high behind. Not needing any more of a warning, four of the civilians immediately kicked their heels into their horses and followed that first of their number fleeing that exposed position where the long slope eased itself into the creek bottom.

  Now the last quartet of the militiamen joined Ad Chapman, heeding Shearer’s order to drop from their saddles, every one of them dragging a rifle or carbine out of a saddle boot as he hit the ground.

  Flopping to his belly and laying his cheek along the top of the buttstock, Chapman could spot nothing more than puffs of smoke in the creekside brush. No bodies meant no targets. Worse still, what he could see was that more and more of the horsemen were loping into the creekside brush, where they were dismounting to join the first who had begun to lay down a concentrated fire into the civilians.

  “You, Charley Crooks!” a Nez Perce voice called from the nearby timber. “I see you, Charley Crooks! Take your papa’s horse and go home!”

  Then another warrior cried, “This ain’t no place to be, Charley Crooks! Get your brother John home with you!”

  And the first shouted a warning: “You gonna die here, Charley! You too John Crooks—take your papa’s horses home!”

  Ad heard the bullet smack into Theodore Swarts lying right next to him. Stifling a yelp of pain by grinding his teeth together, the older civilian rolled over onto his back beside Chapman, blood seeping between the fingers he knitted across his hip.

  “We ain’t gonna stand a chance we stay here,” Shearer grumbled as he crawled up beside the white-faced wounded man.

  “Get chewed up if’n we don’t get and get quick!” agreed Frank Fenn, sprawled behind Shearer.

  “Listen!” Chapman demanded, the hair at the back of his neck rising.

  On both flanks behind them they could make out a steady, growing clatter of rifle fire now. Glancing over his right shoulder, Ad realized that the soldiers who had made their charge into the fray now found themsel
ves in the soup, what with a dozen or so warriors streaming around both ends of their wide front, unslowed. Those Indians were dropping to the sides of their ponies, not popping up to make targets of themselves until they had swept completely behind the soldiers, where they immediately fired at the backs of the white men.

  That company of soldiers had come to rescue the small detail … but in a matter of heartbeats that noisy bunch of soldiers found themselves surrounded.

  And that’s just where Shearer’s bunch was about to find themselves in a matter of seconds if they didn’t start moving now.

  “God-damn-me!” bawled Herman Faxon as he spun to the ground, both hands gripping his left thigh where a greasy gobbet of blood bubbled over his white thumbs pressed tightly against his britches.

  “Don’t know about the rest of you,” Chapman cried as he scrambled to his feet, dragging the pasty-faced Swarts erect on one leg to start hobbling for their horses “But this fella don’t wanna get cut off and wiped out!”

  “You heard him!” Shearer bellowed behind Chapman, lending his empty hand to help boost the badly wounded Swarts into the saddle as the brazen warriors burst out of the brush on three sides of them.

  Injuns is always like that, Ad thought as terror constricted his throat. Once they see they have a man on the run, the bastards will be on you like stink on a boar hog. He leaned off his saddle and held down his arm when two others shuffled over with the wounded Faxon between them. “Hurry with him, goddammit! Let’s get the hell outta here!”

  The enemy’s wild red faces and their crazed shrieks seemed to loom so close they were about to smother Chapman as he got Faxon pulled up behind him and they started away on their frantic retreat.

  “Let’s get outta here,” he growled at the wounded man clinging to him, flaying his horse’s ribs unmercifully with his boot heels, “afore we all get blowed right to hell!”

  * * *

  “F Troop—right oblique!” Captain Perry hollered as he stood in his hooded stirrups. “Forward at a trot!”

  It was dead certain that Theller’s detail would soon be destroyed, if it wasn’t already. By damn, Perry decided, he’d lead the charge with F Company himself and pull their fat out of the fire.

  With leather squeaking, wide-eyed horses snorting nervously, and metal clanking when the men freed the carbines from their sling hooks, Perry heard them clattering after him as he led F toward that ridge riven in halves by the deep cleft of a brushy ravine. This slope would carry them to the high ground where he could survey the field before making his charge.

  Determine the enemy’s strength. Deploy his units. Follow through on the attack. First principle: secure the high ground …

  Over and over he ran the sequence through his mind. Von Clausewitz and others had long said this could work. Wait just a few moments more—allowing Theller’s men to become the anvil. Allow those warriors to sweep in and fully engage Theller, surround his small squad, threaten to destroy them in detail.

  Then, by God, the rest of F Company would be the hammer—racing into position to catch the enemy from the flank, surprising the warriors from the rear.

  His mount carried him onto the high ground, where he could begin signaling orders to the other units.

  Perry immediately turned to his right, where Trumpeter Michael Daly was always to ride. Suddenly finding the private off down to the right along the ragged line gave the captain an odd feeling in the pit of his gut. Perry waved his arms, trying to grab Daly’s attention. For the longest time Perry’s yelling appeared fruitless—forced to shout above the noise of soldiers’ voices and war cries, over the incessant boom and rattle of the mixed gunfire swelling on three sides of them, over the clatter of hooves, the squeal of leather, and the grunts of frightened men teetering on the precipice of battle.

  Finally Daly spotted his captain and headed his way. “Trumpeter! Sound the charge!”

  Perry watched Daly grab for that bugle cord where his trumpet was to hang over the opposite shoulder from his carbine. But this time, the bewildered Daly pulled on the thick strap of woven hemp and found the cord broken. Panic whitened the private’s face as his mount lunged to a halt beside the captain’s.

  “D-don’t have it, s-sir!” the bugler apologized in a pinched voice, holding out the frayed end of the cord while he trotted alongside Perry for the edge of the bluff, both of them bouncing in their saddles as they crossed the uneven ground.

  “Damn,” muttered the captain, disappointment like a cold fist slamming his belly. Somewhere back on their march into this canyon the man’s carbine or sling must have rubbed against that cord until it frayed and the trumpet dropped without Daly noticing.

  The moment they had spotted Perry bringing the majority of F Company toward the ridge, most of the enemy horsemen broke off their sweeping attack on Theller’s harried patrol and streamed to their left as Perry deployed his men just to the right of the lieutenant’s squad, intent upon establishing himself on the easternmost part of White Bird Hill. Still mounted and making a conspicuous target of himself among his few men afoot, Theller continued to hold his small advance guard firmly in hand. Clearly these were frightened men engaged in a fierce, hot skirmish on the slope just below the point where Perry reined up the bulk of F Company now.

  “Halt!” the captain cried to the soldiers behind him who hadn’t been able to urge anything faster than a trot out of their weary horses.

  Across the next few moments most of those men in Theller’s advance guard below turned as they clawed at their cartridge belts and reloaded, plainly relieved to discover how the rest of their company bristled atop the ridge right to their rear.

  Perry quickly came to the realization that he had his men too tightly bunched, but undeniably in possession of the high ground. Scanning the field, the captain calculated he must easily have the enemy outnumbered. In possession of both the high ground and favorable odds! With those two supports of his battle plan propped under him, all he had to do was assure his company commanders kept their heads and they would win the day!

  Good—for the moment, Theller’s detail was holding the line against the advancing horsemen. Yet … if he were to take these two companies and counterattack this mounted enemy swarming across the bottomground, Perry figured those Nez Perce would only fall back to the brush and trees along the banks of White Bird Creek, where the warriors would be concealed. And for his men to pursue the warriors toward the creek would only serve to draw Perry’s advance off the high ground and onto that open creek bottom, totally exposing them to enemy fire from cover.

  But by remaining up here on this grassy knoll Perry felt the situation looked far better. Holding the high ground meant that this was terrain where his battalion could easily defend against any daring forays of those first few horsemen just starting to race past his right, their bright red blankets flapping as they screamed at his front line, taunting his men just before every one of the warriors dropped out of sight to hang from the far sides of their ponies.

  Just looking at what was taking place on the battlefield below him now convinced Perry beyond a doubt against making a counterattack. To pursue the enemy any farther into the valley would be fruitless at best, suicidal at worst.

  No, the battalion would make its stand here instead. Across the top of these slopes his two companies could hold their own until the warriors broke off and fled, once the Nez Perce saw they were not going to whip his soldiers. Then Perry would follow them right into their village, nipping at their cowardly heels—

  “Dis-MOUNT!” he bellowed enthusiastically, remaining in the saddle for the fight. “Horse holders to the REAR!”

  That order was echoed three more times through F Company as the sergeants got their men swinging out of their saddles and snapping throat-latches beneath the horses’ muzzles. Every fourth man was aswirl among his three companions, seizing the long leather straps before turning away with a quartet of fractious cavalry mounts, these horse holders led by Corporal Joseph F. Lytte, who had
quickly selected a protected swale for the company’s animals.

  “Deploy skirmish-SHERS!” Perry bawled the order with an emphasis on that last syllable, watching his four sergeants and three corporals fanning the men left and right across the rumpled, rocky ground describing the front slope of the ridge.

  Those seven noncoms were seeing to it that in these anxious moments the Germans had no problem understanding what was expected of them, making sure the untried recruits didn’t bunch up just as green-broke shavetails had the tendency to do when they were under attack and burrowing in for the first time.

  “Three yards!” the captain reminded them on the left flank, standing in the stirrups. “Three yards and no less!” he turned and bawled at them on the right.

  These Germans and Irishmen—along with those American-born youngsters who had joined the army because there simply was no other work for them back east—were all slowly deploying, spreading out as they gradually descended the gentle slope toward Theller’s advance guard to effect its rescue. As even more naked horsemen broke around the base of a hill on their right flank, some of Company F slowed up to take advantage of the gentle ripples in the terrain, while others promptly went to their bellies in the grass, and a few even slid in behind what few low rocks interrupted the all-but-barren hillside. For those who had nothing more, Perry brooded as he surveyed the success of their deployment, at least the waist-high grass might afford the men some concealment.

  Over on his far left, Theller had his detail scattered down the lower half of the slope. At the bottom where the wagon road laced itself into the valley, the civilians were surely feeling the pressure now, bunched like sheep before a winter wind on the side of a low knoll about a hundred yards from the end of Theller’s line. For all practical purposes, Perry realized, those few militiamen were now his far—and very much exposed—left flank.

  That hill where those ten civilians huddled could prove to be the most critical position on the battlefield, Perry considered gravely, much of his optimism dashed with cold reality. If the warriors flooded around behind those volunteers, the Nez Perce would just as quickly roll those civilians up like an old rug before slamming against Theller’s undermanned detail at the end of F Company. And from there the enemy could boil right on around to the shallow swale where Corporal Lytte’s men held the company’s horses.